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PROPHETIC VOICES 



CONCERNING 



AMERIC 



A MONOGRAPH. 



CHARLES SUMNER. 

\l 




I have a far other and far brighter vision before my gaze. It may be but a 
vision, but I will cherish it. I see one vast confederation stretching from the 
frozen North in unbroken line to the glowing South, and from the wild billows of 
the Atlantic westward to the calmer waters of the Pacific main, — and I see one 
people, and one law, and one language, and one faith, and, over all that wide con- 
tinent, the home of freedom, and a refuge for the oppressed of every race and of 
every clime. — John Bright, Speech at Birmingham, December 18, 1862: Speeches 
by Rogers, Vol. I. p. 225. 



BOSTON: 

LEE AND SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS. 

NEW YORK: 

LEE, SHEPARD, AND DILLINGHAM. 

1874. 



r—S 




Entered according to 

BY FRAMJIS" 

I T 

in the Office of thJ Litar: 



of Congress, in the year 1874, 

BA.LCH, EXECUTOR, 

n of Congress, at Washington. 



University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co., 
Cambridge. 



THIS monograph appeared originally in the " At- 
lantic Monthly." It is now revised and enlarged. 
In the celebration of our hundredth birthday as a 
nation, now fast approaching, these prophetic voices 
will be heard, teaching how much of present fame 
and power was foreseen, also what remains to be 

accomplished. 

C. S. 









C\ 



History shows that the civilization on which we depend is subject to a 
general law which makes it journey by halts, in the manner of armies, in 
tlie direction of the Occident, making' the sceptre pass successively into 
the hands of nations more worthy to hold it, more strong and more able 
to employ it for the general good. 

So it seems that the supreme authority is about to escape from Western 
and Central Europe, to pass to the New World. In the northern part of 
that other hemisphere offshoots of the European race have founded a vig- 
orous society full of sap, whose influence grows with a rapidity that has 
never yet been seen anywhere. In crossing the ocean it has left behind 
on the soil of old Europe traditions, prejudices, and usages which, as 
impediments heavy to move, would have embarrassed its movements and 
retarded its progressive march. In about thirty years the United States 
will have, according to all probability, a hundred millions of population, in 
, possession of the most powerful means, distributed over a territory which 
would make France fifteen or sixteen times over, and of the most wonderful 
disposition. . . . 

Vainly do the occidental and central nations of Europe attribute to them- 
selves a primacy which, in their vanity, they think sheltered from events 
and eternal ; as if there were anything eternal in the grandeur and prosperity 
of societies, the works of men! — Michel Chevalier, Rapports du Jury 
Internationel : Exposition Universelle de 1867 a Paris, Tom. I., pp. dxiv. - 
dxvi. 



Amer 
torie 



America, and especially Saxon America, with its immense virgin terri- 
_ ies, with its republic,' with its equilibrium between stability and pro- 
wess with its harmony between libertv and democracy, is the continent of 
the future, — the immense continent stretched by God between the Atlantic 
and Pacific, where mankind may plant, essay, and resolve all social nrob- 
lem*. [Loud cheers.] Europe has to decide whether she will confound 
herself with Asia, placing upon her lands old altars, and upon the altars old 
idols, and upon the idols immovable theocracies, and upon the theocracies 
despotic empires, or whether she. will go by labor, by liberty, and by the re- 
public, to collaborate with America in the grand work ot universal civiliza- 
tion. — Emilio Castelak, Speech in the Spanish Cortes, June 22, 1871. 



MONOGRAPH. 



THE discovery of America by Christopher Columbus 
is the greatest event of secular history. Besides 
the potato, the turkey, and maize, which it introduced 
at once for the nourishment and comfort of the Old 
World, 1 and also tobacco, which only blind passion for 
the weed could place in the beneficent group, this dis- 
covery opened the door to influences infinite in extent 
and beneficence. Measure them, describe them, picture 
them, you cannot. While yet unknown, imagination 
invested this continent with proverbial magnificence. 
It was the Orient and the land of Cathay. When after- 
wards it took a place in geography, imagination found 
another field in trying to portray its future history. If 
the Golden Age is before, and not behind, as is now 
happily the prevailing faith, then indeed must America 
share at least, if it does not monopolize, the promised 
good. 

Before the voyage of Columbus in 1492, nothing of 
America was really known. Scanty scraps from antiq- 

1 In the Description of England, prefixed to Holinshed's Chronicles mid 
dated 1586, one of these gifts is mentioned: " Of the potato and such vene- 
rous roots as are brought out of Spain, Portugal, and the Indies to furnish 
up our banquets, I speak not." Introduction, Book II., Chap. VI., Vol. I. 
p. 281. (London, 1807.) 

1 A 



2 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

uity, vague rumors from the resounding ocean, and the 
hesitating speculations of science, were all that the in- 
spired navigator found to guide him. Foremost among 
these were the well-known verses of Seneca, so interest- 
ing from ethical genius and a tragical death, in the cho- 
rus of his " Medea," which for generations had been the 
finger-point to an undiscovered world. 

" . . . . venient annis 
Secula seris quibus Oceanus 
Vincula rerum laxet, et ingens 
Pateat tellus, Tiphys que novos 
Detegat orbes, nee sit terris 
Ultima Thule." i 

These verses are vague and lofty rather than specific ; 
but Bacon, after setting them forth, says of them, " A 
'prophecy of the discovery of America" ; and this they 
may well be, if we adopt the translation of Archbishop 
Whately, in his notes to the Essay on Prophecies : 
" There shall come a time in later ages, when ocean 
shall relax his chains and a vast continent appear, and 
a pilot shall find new worlds, and Thule shall be no 
more earth's bound." Fox, turning from statesmanship 
to scholarship, wrote to Wakefield : 2 " The prophecy in 
Seneca's ' Medea ' is very curious indeed." Irving says 
of it : " Wonderfully apposite, and shows, at least, how 
nearly the warm imagination of a poet may approach to 
prophecy. The predictions of the ancient oracle were 
rarely so unequivocal." 3 These verses were adopted by 
Irving as a motto on the title-page of the revised edi- 
tion of his " Life of Columbus." 

1 Act II., v. 371. 

2 June 20, 1800. Memorials and Correspondence, by Lord John Russell, 
Vol. IV. p. 393. 

3 Life of Columbus, Appendix, No. XXII., author's revised edition, 
Vol. III. p. 402. 



PKOPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 3 

Four, if not more, copies are extant in the undoubted 
handwriting of Columbus, — precious autographs to 
tempt collectors ; two in his work on the Prophecies, 
another in a letter to Queen Isabella, and still an- 
other entered among his observations of lunar eclipses 
at Hayti and Jamaica. By these the great admiral 
sailed. Humboldt has preserved a copy in the follow- 
ing questionable form, without even mentioning the 
variation in prosody and in an important word from 
the received text : — 

" Venient annis secula seris 
Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum 
Laxet et ingens pateat tellus 
Tethys que novo? detegat orbes 
Nee sit terris ultima Thule." 

This is more curious, as the verses are correct in the 
letter of Columbus, preserved by Navarrete. 1 

The sympathetic and authoritative commentator, who 
has illustrated the enterprise with all that classical or 
mediaeval literature affords, 2 declares his conviction 
that the discovery of a new continent was more com- 
pletely foreshadowed in the simple geographical state- 
ment of the Greek Strabo, who, after a long life of 
travel, sat down in the eighty-fourth year of his age, dur- 
ing the reign of Augustus, to write the geography of the 
world, including its cosmography. In this work, where 
are gathered the results of ancient study and experience, 
the venerable author, after alluding to the possibility 
of passing direct from Spain to India, and explaining 
that the inhabited world is that which we inhabit and 
know, thus lifts the curtain: "There may be in the 

1 Coleccion de los Viages y Descubrimientos, Tom. II. p. 272. 

2 Humboldt, Examen critique de la G^ographie, Tom. I. pp. 101, 162. 
See also Humboldt, Kosmos, Vol. II. pp. 516, 556, 557, 645. 



4 PKOPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

same temperate zone two and indeed more inhabited 
lands, especially nearest the parallel of Thinae or 
Athens, prolonged into the Atlantic Ocean." x This 
was the voice of ancient science. 

Before the voyage of Columbus two Italian poets 
seem to have beheld the unknown world. The first was 
Petrarca ; nor was it unnatural that his exquisite genius 
should reach behind the veil of Time, as where he pic- 
tures 

" The daylight hastening with winged steps 
Perchance to gladden the expectant eyes 
Of far-off nations in a world remote." 2 

The other was Pulci, who, in his Morgante Maggiore, 
sometimes called the last of the romances and the earli- 
est of Italian epics, reveals an undiscovered world be- 
yond the Pillars of Hercules. 

"' Know that this theory is false; his bark 
The daring mariner shall urge far o'er 
The western wave, a smooth and level plain, 
Albeit the earth is fashioned like a wheel. 
Man was in ancient days of grosser mould, 
And Hercules might blush to learn how far 
Beyond the limits he had vainly set 
The dullest sea-boat soon shall wing her way. 

" Men shall descry another hemisphere, 
Since to one common centre all things tend; 
So earth, by curious mystery divine 
Well balanced, hangs amid the starry spheres. 
At our Antipodes are cities, stales. 
And thronged empires, ne'er divined of yore. 
But see, the sun speeds on his western path 
To glad the nations with expected light." 3 

This translation is by our own eminent historian, 

l Lib. I. p. 65; Lib. II. p. 118. 

2 " . . . . che '1 di nostro vola 

A gente, che di la forse 1' aspetta." 

Canzone IV. 
3 Canto XXV. st. 229, 230. 



PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 5 

Prescott, who first called attention to the testimony, 1 
which is not mentioned even by Humboldt. Leigh 
Hunt referred to it at a later day. 2 Pulci was born in 
Florence, 1431, and died there, 1487, five years before 
Columbus sailed, so that he was not aided by any rumor 
of the discovery he so distinctly predicts. 

Passing from the great event which gave a new world 
not only to Spain but to civilized man, it may not be un- 
interesting to collect some of the prophetic voices con- 
cerning the future of America and the vast unfolding of 
our continent. They will have a lesson also. Seeing 
what has been fulfilled, we may better judge what to 
expect. I shall set them forth in the order of time, 
prefacing each prediction with an account of the author 
sufficient to explain its origin and character. If some 
are already familiar, others are little known. Brought 
together in one body, on the principle of our national 
Union, E pluribus unum, they must give new confidence 
in the destinies of the Republic. 

Only what has been said sincerely by those whose 
words are important deserves place in such a collection. 
Oracles had ceased before our history began, so that we 
meet no responses paltering in a double sense, like the 
deceptive replies to Croesus and to Pyrrhus ; nor any 
sayings which, according to the quaint language of Sir 
Thomas Browne, "seem quodlibetically constituted, and, 
like a Delphian blade, will cut both ways." 3 In Ba- 
con's Essay on Prophecies there is a latitude not to be 
followed. Not fable or romance, but history, is the true 

i History of Ferdinand and Isabella, Vol. II. pp. 117, 118. 

2 Stories from the Italian Poets, p. 171. 

3 Works, Vol. IV. p. 81 (edit. Pickering), Christian Morals. 



b PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

authority, and here experience and genius are the lights 
by which our prophets have walked. Doubtless there is 
a difference in human faculties. Men who have lived 
much and felt strongly see further than others. Their 
vision penetrates the future. Second sight is little more 
than clearness of sight. Milton tells us 

" That old experience does attain 
To something like prophetic strain." 

Sometimes this strain is attained even in youth. But 
here Genius with divine power lifts the curtain and 
sweeps the scene. 

The elder Disraeli in his " Curiosities of Litera- 
ture " has a chapter on " Prediction," giving curious 
instances, among which is that of Rousseau, at the close 
of the third book of "Emile," where he says, "We ap- 
proach a condition of crisis and the age of revolutions." * 
Our own Revolution was then at hand, soon followed 
by that of France. The settlement of America was not 
without auguries even at the beginning. 

A PROPHETIC GROUP. 

Before passing to the more serious examples I bring 
into group a few, marking at least a poet's apprecia- 
tion of the newly discovered country, if not a prophetic 
spirit. The muse was not silent at the various reports. 
As early as 1595, Chapman, famous as the translator of 
Homer, in a poem on Guiana, thus celebrates and com- 
mends the unknown land: — 

" Guiana, whose rich feet are mines of gold, 
Whose forehead knocks against the roof of stars, 
Stands on her tiptoe at fair England looking, 

l Vol. HI. p. 272. 



A PROPHETIC GROUP. / 

Kissing her hand, bowing her mighty breast, 
And every sign of all submission making, 
To be the sisier and the daughter both 
Of our most sacred maid. 

And there do palaces and temples rise 
Out of tne earth and kiss th' enamor'd skies, 
Where new Britannia humbly kneels to Heaven, 
The world to her, and both at her blest feet 
In whom the circles of ah empire meet." 

In similar strain Drayton, who nourished under 
James L, addresses Virginia: — 

"And ours to hold 
Virginia, 
Earth's only paradise. 

"Where nature hath in store 
Fowl, venison, and fish, 
And the fruitful' st soil 
Without your toil 
Three harvests more, 
All greater than your wish. 

" To whose, the golden age 
Still nature's laws doth give, 

No other cares that 'tend 

But them to defend 
From winter's ager 1^7** 
That long there doth not live." 1 

Daniel, poet-laureate and contemporary, seemed to 
foresee the spread of our English speech, anticipating 
our own John Adams : — 

" Who in time knows whither we may vent 
The treasures of our tongue ? To what strange shores 
This gain of our best glory shall be sent, 
T' enrich unknowing nations with our stores? 
What worlds, in the yet unformed Occident, 
May 'come refined with th' accents that are ours? " 2 

1 To the Virginian Voyage: Anderson's British Poets, Vol. III. p 583. 

2 Musophilus: Anderson's British Poets, Vol. IV. p. 541. 



8 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

The emigration prompted by conscience and for the 
sake of religious liberty inspired the pious and poetical 
Herbert to famous verses : — 

" Religion stands on tiptoe in our land, 
Ready to pass to the American strand." 

The poet died in 1632, twelve years after the landing 
of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, and only two years after 
the larger movement of the Massachusetts Company, 
which began the settlement of Boston. The verses saw 
the light with difficulty, being refused the necessary 
license ; but the functionary at last yielded, calling the 
author " a divine poet," and expressing the hope that 
" the world will not take him for an inspired prophet." 1 
Fuller, writing a little later, was perhaps moved by 
Herbert when he- said : " I am confident that America, 
though the youngest sister of the four, is now grown 
marriageable, and daily hopes to get Christ to her hus- 
band, by the preaching of the gospel." 2 In a different 
vein a contemporary poet, the favorite of Charles I., 
Thomas Carew, in a masque performed by the mon- 
arch and his courtiers at Whitehall, February 18, 
1633, made sport of New England, saying that it had 
" purged more virulent humors from the politic body 
than guaiacum and the West Indian drugs have from 
the natural bodies of this kingdom." 3 But these words 
uttered at the English Court were praise. 

Then came answering voices from the Colonies. Bev. 
William Morrill, of the Established Church, a settler of 

1 The Church Militant : Herbert's Poetical Works, p. 247, note (ed. 
Little and Brown). 

2 The Holy State, Book III., Chap. XVI., Of Plantations. 

3 Coelum Britannicum : Anderson's British Poets, Vol. III. p. 716. 



A PROPHETIC GROUP. 



1623, said of New England, in a Latin poem translated 



by himself : — 



" A grandchild to Earth' $ paradise is born, 
Well limbed, well nerved, fair, rich, sweet, yet forlorn." * 

" The Simple Cobbler of Agawam," another name for 
Eev. Nathaniel Ward of Ipswich, Mass., at the close of 
his witty book, first published in 1645 and having five 
different editions in the single year of 1647, sends an 
invitation to those at home : — 

" So farewell England old 
If evil times ensue, 
Let good men come to us, 
Wee '1 welcome them to New." 

Another witness we meet in the writings of Franklin. 
It is George Webb, who, decamping from Oxford and the 
temptations of scholarship, indented himself according 
to the usage of the times, and became what Franklin 
calls "a bought servant" on our shores, where his genius 
flowered in the prophetic couplet, written in 1728 : — 

"Rome shall lament her ancient fame declined, 
And Philadtlphia be the Athens of mankind." 

Another English prophet, in verses written during our 
colonial days, foretells that his country shall see British 
wealth, power, and glory repeated in the New World: — 

" In other lands, another Britain see, 
And what thou art America shall be." 2 

And yet another, Hugh Henry Brackenridge, born in 
Scotland, and a graduate of our Princeton College in 

1 Duyckinck's Cyclopaedia of American Literature, Vol. I. p. 2. 

2 Webster: Works, Vol. II. p. 510. Speech at the Festival of the Sons of 
New Hampshire. 

1* 



10 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

1771, in a Commencement poem on "The Bising Glory 
of America," pictured the future of the continent, adopt- 
ing as a motto the verses of Seneca, so often quoted by 
Columbus : — 

" This is thy praise, America, thy power, 
Thou best of climes by science visited, 
By freedom blest, and richly stored with all 
The luxuries of life. Hail, happy land, 
The seat of empire, the abode of kings, 
The final stage where Time shall introduce 
Renowned characters and glorious works of art, 
Which not the ravages of Time shall waste 
Till he himself has run his long career." 1 

To these add Voltaire, who, in his easy verse written 
in 1751, represents God as putting fever in European cli- 
mates " and the remedy in America." 2 

From this chorus, with only one discordant voice, I 
pass, to a long line of voices so distinct and full as to 
be recognized separately. 



JOHN MILTON, 1641. 

The list opens with John Milton, whose lofty words 
are like an overture to the great drama of emigration, 
with its multitudes in successive generations. If not a 
prophet, he has yet struck a mighty key-note in our his- 
tory. 

The author -of "Paradise Lost," of "Comus" and the 
heroic Sonnets, needs no special mention beyond the 
two great dates of birth and death. He was born 9th 

1 Duj'ckinck's Cyclopaedia of American Literature, Vol. I. p. 299. 

2 " II met la fievre en nos climats, 
Et le remede en Amtrique." 
Ep'itre mi Rot de Prusse, LXXV. : (Euvres, XIII. p. 186 (ed. 1784). 



ABEAHAM COWLEY, 1667. 11 

December, 1G08, and died 8th November, 1674. The 
treatise from which I quote was written in 1641. 

"What numbers of faithful and free-born Englishmen and 
good Christians have been constrained to forsake their dear- 
est home, their friends and kindred, whom nothing but the 
wide ocean and the savage deserts of America could hide 
and shelter from the fury of the bishops ! 0, if we could but 
see the shape of our dear mother England, as poets are wont 
to give a personal form to what they please, how would she 
appear, think ye, but in a mourning weed, with ashes upon 
her head, and tears abundantly flowing from her eyes, to 
behold so many of her children exposed at once and thrust 
from things of dearest necessity, because their conscience 
could not assent to things which the bishops thought indif- 
ferent 1 Let the astrologer be dismayed at the portentous 
blaze of comets and impressions in the air, as foretelling 
troubles and changes to states ; I shall believe there cannot 
be a more ill-boding sign to a nation (God turn the omen 
from us !) than when the inhabitants, to avoid insufferable 
grievances at home, are enforced by heaps to forsake their 
native country." 1 

Here in a few words are the sacrifices made by our 
fathers, as they turned from their English homes, and 
also the conscience which prompted and sustained them. 
Begun in sacrifice and in conscience, their empire grew 
and flourished with constant and increasing promise of 
future grandeur. 

ABEAHAM COWLEY, 1667. 

Contemporary with Milton, and at the time a rival 
for the palm of poetry, was Abraham Cowley, born 

1 Reformation in England, Book II.: Works, Vol. III. p. 45 (Pickering's 
edition). 



12 PKOPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

1618, died 28th July, 1667. His biography stands at 
the head of Johnson's " Lives of the British Poets," the 
first in that instructive collection. The two poets were 
on opposite sides : Milton for the Commonwealth, Cow- 
ley for the King. 

His genius was recognized in his own time, and when 
he died, at the age of forty-nine, after a night of expos- 
ure under the open sky, Charles II. said : " Mr. Cowley 
has not left a better man behind him in England." He 
was buried in Westminster Abbey, near Chaucer and 
Spenser. But post mortem praise was too late to as- 
suage the sting of royal ingratitude to a faithful servant. 
His disappointment broke forth in the declared desire 
" to retire to some of the American plantations and 
forsake the world forever." Instead of America he se- 
lected the county of Kent, where he withdrew and es- 
pecially delighted in the study of plants. His botany 
flowered in poetry. He composed, in much admired 
Latin verse, six books on Plants, — the first and second 
in elegiac verse, displaying the qualities of herbs ; the 
'third and fourth, in various measures, on the beauties of 
flowers ; and the fifth and sixth in hexameters, like the 
Georgics, on the uses of trees. The first two books, in 
Latin, appeared in 1662 ; the other four, also in Latin, 
were not published till 1678, the year after his death. 
They did not see the English light till 1705, when 
a translation was published by Tate, 1 from which I 
quote. 

Two fruits of America are commemorated. The first 
is that which becomes chocolate : — 

1 Cowley's Histoiy of Plants, a poem in six Books, with Rapin's Defi- 
nition of Gardens, a poem in four Books. Translated from the Latin, the 
former by N. Tate and others, the latter by James Gardner. (London, 1705.) 



ABEAHAM COWLEY, 1667. 13 

Guatimala produced a fruit unknown 

To Europe, which with double use endued 

For chocolate at once is drink and food, 

Does strength and vigor to the limbs impart, 

Makes fresh the countenance aud cheers the heart." * 



The other is the cocoa : — 

" While she preserves this Indian palm alone 
America can never be undone, 
Embowelled and of all her gold bereft 
Her liberty and cocas only left, 
She 's richer than the Spaniard with his theft." 2 

The poet, addressing the New World, becomes pro- 
phetic : ■ — 

" To live by wholesome laws you now begin 
Buildings to raise and fence your cities in, 
To plough the earth, to plough the very main, 
And traffic with the universe maintain; 
Defensive arms and ornaments of dress, 
All implements of life you now possess. 
To you the arts of war and peace are known, 
And whole Minerva is become your own. 
Our muses, to your sires an unknown band, 
Already have got footing in your land. 

" Long rolling years shall late bring on the times 
When with your gold debauched and ripened crimes 
Europe, the world's most noble part, shall fall 
Upon her banished gods and virtue call 
In vain, while foreign and domestic war 
At once shall her distracted bosom tear, — 
Forlorn, and to be pitied, even by you: 
Meanwhile your rising glory you shall view, 
Wit, learning, virtue, discipline of war, 
Shall for protection to your world repair, 
And fix a long illustrious empire there. 

" Late destiny shall high exalt your reign, 
Whose pomp no crowds of slaves a needless train, 
Nor gold, the rabble's idol, shall support, 

1 I^k V. 2 Ibid . 



14 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

Like Montezume's or Guanapaci's court, 

But such true graudeur as old Rome maintained ; 

Where fortune was a slave, and virtue reigned." 1 

This prophecy, though appearing in English tardily, 
may be dated from 1667, when the Latin poem was 
already written. 

SIK THOMAS BROWNE, 1682. 

Dr. Johnson called attention to a tract of Sir Thomas 
Browne entitled "A Prophecy concerning the Future 
State of Several Nations," where the famous author 
" plainly discovers his expectation to be the same with 
that entertained later with more confidence by Dr. 
Berkeley, that America will be the seat of the fifth em- 
pire." 2 The tract is vague, but prophetic. 

Sir Thomas Browne was born 19th October, 1605, 
and died 19th October, 1682. His tract was published, 
two years after his death, in a collection of Miscellanies, 
edited by Dr. Tenison. As a much-admired author, 
some of whose writings belong to our English classics, 
his prophetic prolusions are not unworthy of notice. 
They are founded on verses entitled " The Prophecy," 
purporting to have been sent him by a friend, among 
which are the following: — 

" When New England shall trouble new Spain, 
When Jamaica shall he lady of the isles and the main; 
When Spain shall be in America hid, 
And Mexico shall prove a Madrid ; 
Wlien Africa shall no more sell out their blades 
To make slaves and drudges to the American tracts; 

When America shall cease to send out its treasure, 
But employ it at home in American pleasure ; 

i Book V. 2 Life of Sir Thon,as Browne. 



SIR THOMAS BKOWNE, 1682. 15 

When the New World shall the Old invade, 

Nor count them their lords but their fellows in trade; 

Then think strange things have come to light. 
Whereof but few have had a foresight." 1 

Some of these words are striking, especially when we 
consider their early date. The author of the "Religio 
Medici" seems in the main to accept the prophecy, 
which may be his own. In a commentary on each 
verse he seeks to explain it. New England is " that 
thriving colony which hath so much increased in his 
day " ; its people are already " industrious," and when 
they have so far increased " that the neighboring coun- 
try will not contain them, they will range still further, 
and be able in time to set forth great armies, seek for 
new possessions, or make considerable and conjoined mi- 
grations" The verse touching Africa will be fulfilled 
" when African countries shall no longer make it a com- 
mon trade to sell away their people." And this may 
come to pass " whenever they shall be well civilized 
and acquainted with arts and affairs sufficient to employ 
people in their countries." It would also come to pass, 
"if they should be converted to Christianity, but espe- 
cially into Mahometism ; for then they would never sell 
those of their religion to be slaves unto Christians." 
The verse concerning America is expounded thus : — 

" That is, when America shall be better civilized, new 
policied, and divided between great princes, it may come to 
pass that they will no longer suffer their treasure of gold and 
silver to be sent out to maintain the luxury of Europe and 
other ports ; but rather employ it to their own advantages, 
in great exploits and undertakings, magnificent structures, 
wars, or expeditions of their own." 2 

1 Browne, Works, Vol. IV. pp. 232, 233. 

2 Ibid., p. 236. 



16 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

The other verse, on the invasion of the Old "World by 
the New, is explained : — 

" That is, when America shall be so well peopled, civilized, 
and divided into kingdoms, they are like to have so little re- 
gard of their originals as to achioivledge no subjection unto 
them; they may also have a distinct commerce themselves, 
or but independently with those of Europe, and may hos- 
tilely and piratically assault them, even as the Greek and 
Roman colonies after a long time dealt with their original 
countries." 1 

That these speculations should arrest the" attention 
of Dr. Johnson is something. They seem to have been 
in part fulfilled. An editor quietly remarks, that, " to 
judge from the course of events since Sir Thomas wrote, 
we may not unreasonably look forward to their more 
complete fulfilment." 2 



SIR JOSIAH CHILD AND DR. CHARLES DAVENANT, 1698. 

In contrast with the poets, but mingling with them 
in forecast, were two writers on trade, who saw the 
future through facts and figures, or what one of them 
called " political arithmetic," even discerning colonial 
independence in the distance. These were Sir Josiah 
Child, born 1G30 and died 1690, and Dr. Charles Dave- 
nant, born 1656 and died 1714. 

Child is mentioned by Defoe as " originally a trades- 
man." Others speak of him as "a South walk, brewer," 
and Macculloch calls him " one of the most extensive 
and, judging from his work, best-informed merchants 



i Rrowne, Works, Vol. IV. p. 236. 
2 Ibid., p. 231, note. 



SIR JOSIAH CHILD AND DR. DAVENANT, 1698. 17 

of his time." x He rose to wealth and consideration, 
founding a family which intermarried with the nobility. 
His son was known as Lord Castlemaine, Earl Tilney 
of Ireland. Davenant was eldest son of the author of 
Gondibert, " rare Sir William/' and, like his eminent 
father, a dramatist. He was also member of Parlia- 
ment, and wrote much on commercial questions ; but 
here he was less famous than Child, whose " New Dis- 
course of Trade," so far as it concerned the interest of 
money, first appeared in 1668, and since then has been 
often reprinted and much quoted. There was an en- 
larged edition in 1694. That now before me appeared 
in 1698, and in the same year Davenant published his 
kindred " Discourses on the Public Kevenues arid on 
the Trade of England," among which is one " on the 
Plantation Trade." The two authors treated especially 
the Colonies, and in similar spirit. 

The work of Child was brought to recent notice by 
the voluminous plodder George Chalmers, particularly 
in his writings on the Colonies and American Indepen- 
dence, 2 and then again by the elder Disraeli in his 
" Curiosities of Literature," who places a prophecy at- 
tributed to him in his chapter on " Prediction." After 
referring to Harrington and Defoe, " who ventured to 
predict an event, not by other similar events, but by a 
theoretical principle which he. had formed," Disraeli 
quotes Chalmers : — 

" Child, foreseeing from experience that men's conduct 
must finally be decided by their principles, foretold the 

1 The Literature of Political Economy, p. 42. 

2 See Opinions on Interesting Subjects of Public Law and Commercial 
Policy arising from American Independence, p. 108. A motto on the re- 
verse of the title-page is from Child. 

B 



18 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

colonial revolt. Defoe, allowing his prejudices to obscure 
his sagacity, reprobated that suggestion, because he deemed 
interest a more strenuous prompter than enthusiasm." 

The pleasant hunter of curiosities then says : — 

"The predictions of Harrington and Defoe are precisely 
such as we might expect from a petty calculator or a politi- 
cal economist, who can see nothing further than immediate 
results ; but the true philosophical predictor was Child, who 
had read the past." 1 

DTsraeli was more curious than accurate. His ex- 
cuse is that he followed another writer. 2 The predic- 
tion attributed to Child belongs to Davenant ; but the 
two are coupled by the introduction of words from the 
former. 

The work of Child is practical rather than specula- 
tive, and shows a careful student of trade. Dwelling 
on the " plantations " of England and their value, he 
considers their original settlement, and here we find a 
painful contrast between New England and Virginia. 3 
Passing from the settlement to the character, New 
England is described as " being a more independent 
government from this kingdom than any other of our 
plantations, and the people that went thither more one 
peculiar sort or sect than those that went to the rest of 
our plantations." 4 He recognized in them " a people, 
whose frugality, industry, and temperance, and the hap- 
piness of whose laws and institutions, do promise to 
themselves long life with a wonderful increase, of jpeo-> 

1 Curiosities of Literature. Vol. HI. p 303 (ed. London, 1849). 

2 Chalmers, Life of Defoe, p. 68. 

8 A New Discourse of Trade, p. 183 (ed. 1698). 
4 Ibid., p. 201. 



SIR JOSIAH CHILD AND DR. DAVENANT, 1698. 19 

pie, riches, and power." * And then : " Of all the 
American plantations, his Majesty hath none so apt for 
the building of shipping as New England. Nor none 
comparably so qualified for breeding of seamen, not only 
by reason of the natural industry of that people, but 
principally by reason of their cod and mackerel fish- 
eries." 2 On his last page are words more than compli- 
mentary : — 

" To conclude this chapter and to do right to that most 
industrious English colony, I must confess that though we 
lose by their unlimited trade with our foreign plantations, 
yet we are very great gainers by their direct trade to and 
from Old England. Our yearly English exportations of 
English manufactures, malt and other goods from hence 
thither, amounting in my opinion to ten times the value of 
what is imported from thence." 3 

Here is keen observation, but hardly prophecy. 
Contrast this with Davenant : — 

"As the case now stands, we shall show that they [the 
Colonies] are a spring of wealth to this nation, that they 
work for us, that their treasure centres all here, and that 
the laws have tied them fast enough to us ; so that it must 
be through our own fault and misgovernment, if they become 
independent of England. .... Corrupt governors may here- 
after provoke them to withdraw their obedience, and by supine 
negligence or upon mistaken measures, we may let them 
grow, more especially New England, in naval strength and 
power, which, if suffered, we cannot expect to hold them long in 
our subjection. If, as some have proposed, we should think 
to build ships of war there, we may teach them an art which 

i A New Discourse of Trade, p. 203 (ed. 1698). 

2 Ibid., p. 215. 

3 Ibid., p. 216. 



20 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

will cost us some blows to make them forget. Some such 
courses may, indeed, drive them, or put it into their heads, 
to erect themselves into independent Commonwealths." 1 

Davenant then quotes Child's remark on New Eng- 
land as " the most proper for building ships and breed- 
ing seamen," and adds : — 

" So that, if we should go to cultivate among them the 
art of navigation and teach them to have a naval force, they 
nmij set up for themselves and make the greatest part of our 
West India trade precarious." 2 

These identical words are quoted by Chalmers, who 
exclaims : " Of that prophecy we have lived, alas ! to see 
the fulfilment." 3 Doubtless, on this Disraeli founded 
his prediction. 

Chalmers emigrated from Scotland to Maryland, and 
practised in the colonial courts, but, disgusted with 
American independence, returned home, where he wrote 
and edited much, especially on colonial questions, ill 
concealing a certain animosity, and, on one occasion, 
stating that, amontr the documents in the Board of 
Trade and Paper Office were " the most satisfactory 
proofs " of the settled purpose of the Colonies, from " the 
epoch of the Revolution of 1688," "to acquire direct in- 
dependence." 4 But none of these proofs are presented. 
The same allegation was also made by Viscount Bury 
in his " Exodus of Western Nations," 5 but also without 
proofs. 

The name of Defoe is always interesting, and I can- 

1 Discourses, Part II. pp. 204, 205. 

2 Ibid., p. 206. 

3 Opinions on Interesting Subjects, p. 10S. 

4 Opinions of Eminent Lawyers, Preface xvi. 
6 Vol. II. p. 395. 



BISHOP BERKELEY, 1726. 21 

not close this article without reference to the saying 
attributed to him by D'Israeli. I know not where in 
his multitudinous writings it may be found, unless in 
his " Plan of the English Commerce," and here careful 
research discloses nothing nearer than this : — 

" What a glorious trade to England it would be to have 
these colonies increased with a million of people, to be 
clothed, furnished, and supplied with all their needful 
things, food excepted, only from us, and tied down forever 
to its by that immortal, indissoluble bond of trade, their inter- 
est" 1 

In the same work he says : — 

" This is certain and will be granted, that the product of 
our improved colonies raises infinitely more trade, employs 
more hands, and, I think I may say by consequence, brings 
in more wealth to this one particular nation or people, the 
English, than all the mines of New Spain do to the Span- 
iards." 2 

In this vision the author of Robinson Crusoe was 
permitted to see the truth with regard to our country, 
although failing to recognize future independence. 

BISHOP BERKELEY, 1726. 

It is pleasant to think that Berkeley, whose beautiful 
verses predictingthe future of America are so oftenquoted, 
was so sweet and charming a character. Atterbury wrote 
of him : " So much understanding, knowledge, innocence, 
and humility I. should have thought confined to angels, 
had I never seen this gentleman." Swift said : " He is 

1 Page 361. 

2 Ibid., pp. 306, 307. See also The Complete English Tradesman, Chap. 
XXXVI., Works, Vol. XVII. pp. 256, 259. 



22 PEOPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

an absolute philosopher with regard to money, title, and 
power." Pope let drop a tribute which can never die, — 

" To Berkeley every virtue under Heaven." 

Such a person was naturally a seer. 

He is compendiously called an Irish prelate and phi- 
losopher. Born in Kilkenny, 1684, and dying in Ox- 
ford, 1753, he began as a philosopher. While still young, 
he wrote his famous treatise on " The Principles of Hu- 
man Knowledge," where he denies the existence of mat- 
ter, insisting that it is only an impression produced on 
the mind by Divine power. After travel for several 
years on the Continent, and fellowship with the witty 
and learned at home, among whom were Addison, Swift, 
Pope, Garth, and Arbuthnot, he conceived the project of 
educating the aborigines of America, which was set forth 
in a tract, published in 1725, entitled " Scheme for Con- 
verting the Savage Americans to Christianity by a Col- 
lege to be erected in the Summer Islands, otherwise 
called the Isles of Bermuda." Persuaded by his benevo- 
lence, the ministers promised twenty thousand pounds, 
and there were several private subscriptions to promote 
what was called by the king "so pious an undertaking." 
Berkeley possessed already a deanery in Ireland, with 
one thousand pounds a year. Turning away from this 
residence, and refusing to be tempted by an English 
mitre, offered by the queen, he set sail for Pihode Island, 
" which lay nearest Bermuda," where, after a tedious 
passage of five months, he arrived 23d January, 1729. 
Here he lived on a farm back of Newport, having been, 
according to his own report, " at great expense for land 
and stock." In familiar letters he has recorded his im- 
pression of this place, famous since for fashion. " The 



BISHOP BERKELEY, 1726. 23 

climate," he says, " is like that of Italy, and not at all 
colder in the winter than I have known it everywhere 
north of Some. This island is pleasantly laid out in 
hills and vales and rising grounds, hath plenty of excel- 
lent springs and fine rivulets and many delightful land- 
scapes of rocks and promontories and adjacent lands. 
The town of Newport contains about six thousand souls, 
and is the most thriving, flourishing place in all America 
for its'bigness. It is very pretty and pleasantly situated. 
I was never more agreeably surprised than at the first 
sight of the town and its harbor." 2 He seems to have 
been contented, and when his companions went to Bos- 
ton stayed at home, " preferring," as lie wrote, " quiet 
and solitude to the noise of a great town, notwithstand- 
ing all the solicitations that have been used to draw us 
thither." 2 

The money he had expected, especially from the king's 
ministers, failed, and after waiting in vain expectation 
two years and a half, he returned to England, leaving an 
infant son buried in the churchyard of Trinity, and be- 
stowing upon Yale College a library of eight hundred 
and eighty volumes, as well as his estate in Rhode Island. 
During his residence at Newport he had preached every 
Sunday, and was indefatigable in pastoral duties, besides 
meditating, if not composing, " The Minute Philosopher," 
which was published shortly after his return. 

In his absence he had not been forgotten at home ; 
and shortly after his return he became Bishop of Cloyne, 
in which place he was most exemplary, devoting himself 
to his episcopal duties, to the education of his children, 
and the pleasures of composition. 

1 Berkeley, Works, Vol. I., Life prefixed, p. 53. 

2 Ibid., p. 55. 



24 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

It was while occupied with his plan of a college, es- 
pecially as a nursery for the Colonial churches, shortly 
before sailing for America, that the great future was 
revealed to him, and he wrote the famous poem, the only 
one found among his works, entitled "Verses on the 
Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America." * 
The date may be fixed at 1726. Such a poem was an 
historic event. I give the first and last stanzas. 

" The Muse, disgusted at an age and clime 
Barren of every glorious theme, 
In distant lands now waits a better time, 
Producing subjects worthy fame. 

Westward the course of empire takes its way ; 

The first four acts already past, 
A fifth shall close the drama with the day ; 
Time's noblest offspring is the last." 

It is difficult to exaggerate the value of these verses, 
which have been so often quoted as to become a common- 
place of literature and politics. There is nothing from 
any oracle, there is very little from any prophecy, which 
can compare with them. The biographer of Berkeley, 
who wrote in the last century, was very cautious, when, 
after calling them " a beautiful copy of verses," he says 
that "another age will perhaps acknowledge the old 
conjunction of the prophetic character with that of the 
poet to have again taken place." 2 The vates of the Ro- 
mans was poet and prophet ; and such was Berkeley. 

Mr. Webster calls this an " extraordinary prophecy," 
and then says : " It was an intuitive glance into futurity ; 
it was a grand conception, strong, ardent, glowing, em- 
bracing all time since the creation of the world and all 

1 Berkeley, Works, Vol. II. p. 443. » 

2 Ibid., Vol. I., Life prefixed, p. 15. 



BISHOP BERKELEY, 172G. 25 

regions of which that world is composed, and judging of 
the future by just analogy with the past. And the in- 
imitable imagery and beauty with which the thought is 
expressed, joined to the conception itself, render it one of 
the most striking passages in our language." x 

The sentiment which prompted the prophetic verses of 
the excellent Bishop was widely diffused, or perhaps it 
was a natural prompting. 2 Of this illustration is afford- 
ed in the life of Benjamin West. On his visit to Borne 
in 1760, the young artist encountered a famous improv- 
visatore, who, learning that he was an American come 
to study the line arts in Eome, at once addressed him 
with the ardor of inspiration, and to the music of his 
guitar. After singing the darkness which for so many 
ages veiled America from the eyes of science, and also 
the fulness of time when the purposes for which this 
continent had been raised from the deep would be man- 
ifest, he hailed the youth before him as an instrument 
of Heaven to raise there- a taste for the arts which ele- 
vate man, and an assurance of refuge to science and 
knowledge, when, in the old age of Europe, they should 
have forsaken her shores. Then, in the spirit of proph- 
ecy, he sang : — 

" But all things of heavenly origin, like the glorious sun, 
move westward ; and truth and art. have their periods of shin- 
ing and of night. Rejoice then, venerable Rome, in thy 
divine destiny ; for though dai-kness overshadow thy seats, 
and though thy mitred head must descend into the dust, 
thy spirit immortal and undecayed already spreads towards a 
new world." 8 

1 Address at the laying of the corner-stone of the addition to the Capitol, 
July 4, 1851: Works, Vol. II. p. 596. See also p. 510. 

2 Grahame, History of the United States, Vol. IV. pp. 136, 448. 
8 Gait, Life of West, Vol. I. pp. 116, 117. 

2 



26 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

John Adams in his old age, dwelling on the reminis- 
cences of early life, records that nothing was " more 
ancient in his memory than the observation that arts, 
sciences, and empire had travelled westward, and in con- 
versation it was always added, since he was a child, that 
their next leap would be over the Atlantic into America." 
With the assistance of an octogenarian neighbor, he re- 
called a couplet that had been repeated with rapture as 
long as he could remember : — 

" The Eastern nations sink, their glory ends, 
And empire rises where the sun descends." 

It was imagined by his neighbor that these lines came 
from some of our early pilgrims, — by whom they had 
been "inscribed, or rather drilled, into a rock on the 
shore of Monument Bay in our old Colony of Plym- 
outh." 1 

Another illustration of this same sentiment is found 
in Burnaby's " Travels through the Middle Settlements 
of North America, in 1759 and 1760," a work first pub- 
lished in 1775. In reflections at the close the traveller 
remarks : — 

" An idea, strange as it. is visionary, has entered into the 
minds of the generality of mankind, that empire is travelling 
westward: and every one is looking forward with eager and im- 
patient expectation to that destined moment when America is to 
give the law to the rest of the world."' 1 

The traveller is none the less an authority for the 
prevalence of this sentiment because he declares it " il- 
lusory and fallacious," and records his conviction that 

1 Works, Vol. IX. pp. 597-599. 

2 Burnaby, Travels, p. 115. 



SAMUEL SEWALL, 1727. 27 

" America is formed for happiness, but not for empire." 
Happy America ! What empire can compare with hap- 
piness ! Making amends for this admission, the jealous 
traveller, in his edition of 1796, after the adoption of 
the National Constitution, announces that " the present 
union of American States will not be permanent, or last 
for any considerable length of time," and " that that ex- 
tensive country must necessarily be divided into sepa- 
rate states and kingdoms." * Thus far the Union has 
stood against all shocks, foreign or domestic ; and the 
prophecy of Berkeley is more than ever in the popular 
mind. 

SAMUEL SEWALL, 1727. 

Berkeley saw the sun of empire travelling westward. 
A contemporary whose home was made in New Eng- 
land, Samuel Sewall, saw the New Heaven and the New 
Earth. He was born at Bishop-Stoke, England, 28th 
March, 1652, and died at Boston, 1st January, 1730. A 
child emigrant in 1661, he became a student and graduate 
of our Cambridge ; in 1692, Judge of the Supreme Court 
of Massachusetts ; in 1718, Chief Justice. He was of 
the court which condemned the witches, b.ut afterwards, 
standing up before the congregation of his church, made 
public confession of error, and his secret diary bears 
testimony to his trial of conscience. In harmony with 
this contrition was his early feeling for the enslaved 
African, as witness his tract " The Selling of Joseph," 
so that he may be called the first of our Abolitionists. 

Besides an " Answer to Queries respecting America," 
in 1690, and " Proposals touching the Accomplishment 

1 Burnaby, Travels, Preface, p. 21. 



28 PKOPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

of the Prophecies/' in 1713, he wrote another work, with 
the following title : — 

" Phenomena qusedam Apocalyptica ad Aspect um Novi 
Orbis configurata. Or some few Lines towards a description 
of the New Heaven as it makes to those who stand upon 
the New Earth, By Samuel Sewall A. M. and some time Fel- 
low of Harvard College at Cambridge in New England." 

The copy before me is the second edition, with the 
imprint, " Massachuset, Boston Printed by Bartholo- 
mew Green, & sold by Benjamin Eliot, Samuel Gerrish 
& Daniel Henchman, 1727." There is a prophetic voice 
even in the title, which promises " some few lines to- 
wards a description of the New Heaven as it makes to 
those who stand upon the New Earth." This is followed 
by verses from the Scriptures, among which is Isaiah 
xi. 14 : " But they shall fly upon the shoulders of the 
Philistines toward the west " ; also, Acts i. 8 : " Ye shall 
be witnesses unto me unto the uttermost parts of the 
earth," — quoting here from the Spanish Bible, Hasta 
lo ultimo de la tierra. 

In the second Dedication the author speaks of his 
book as "this vindication of America." Then comes, 
in black letter, what is entitled "Psalm, 139, 7-10," 
containing this stanza : — 

" Yea, let me take the morning wings 

And let me go and hide. 
Even there where are the farthest parts 

Where flowing sea doth slide. 
Yea, even thither also shall 

Thy reaching hand me guide; 
And thy right hand shall hold me fast, 

And make me to abide." 

Two different dedications follow, the first dated " Bos- 



SAMUEL SEWALL, 1727. 29 

ton, K E., April 16th, 1697." Here are words on the 
same key with the title : — 

" For I can't but think that either England or New Eng- 
land, or both together is best, is the only bride-maid men- 
tioned by name in David's Epithalamium to assist at the 
great wedding now shortly to be made Angels in- 
cognito have sometimes made themselves guests to men, 
designing thereby to surprise them with a requital of their 
love to strangers. In like manner the English nation in 
showing kindness to the aboriginal natives of America may 

possibly show kindness to Israelites unaware 

Instead of being branded for slaves with hot irons in the 
face and arms, and driven by scores in mortal. chains, they 
shall wear the name of God in their foreheads, and they 
shall be delivered into the glorious liberty of the children of 

God Asia, Africa, and Europe have each of them 

had a glorious gospel-day. None, therefore, will be grieved 
at any one's pleading that America may be made coparcener 
with her sisters in the free and sovereign grace of God." 

Entering upon his subject, our prophet says : — 

" Whereas Neiv-England, and Boston of the Massachusets 
have this to make mention of; that they can tell their Age, 
and account it their Honour to have their birth, and parent- 
age kept in everlasting remembrance. And in every deed, 
the families, and churches which first ventured to follow 
Christ thorow the Atlantiek Ocean, into a strange land, full 
of wild men, were so religious ; their end so holy ; their self- 
denyal in pursuing of it, so extraordinary ; that I can't but 
hope that the plantation has thereby gaind a very strong 
Crasis ; and that it will not be of one or two, or three cen- 
turies only ; but by the Grace of God it will be very long 
lasting." 1 

1 Page 1. 



30 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

Then again : — 

" New-Jerusalem will not straiten, and enfeeble ; but won- 
derfully dilate, and invigorate Christianity in the several 
Quarters of the World, in Asia, in Africa, in Europe, and in 
America. And one that has been born, or but liv'd in 
America, more than three score years ; it may be pardon- 
able for him to ask, Why may not that be the place of New- 
Jerusalem." 1 

And here also : — 

" Of all the parts of the world, which do from this Char- 
ter, entitle themselves to the Government of Christ, America's 
plea, in my opinion is the strongest. For when once Chris- 
topher Columbus had added this fourth to the other three 
parts of the foreknown World ; they who sailed farther 
Westward, arriv'd but where they had been before. The 
Globe now failed of offering any thing New to the adven- 
turous Travailer : or however, it could not afford another 
new World. And probably, the consideration of America's 
being the beginning of the East, and the End of the West ; was 
that which moved Columbus to call some part of it by the 
Name of Alpha and Omega. Now if the last Adam did give 
order for the engraving of his own name upon this last 
Earth : 'twill draw with it great Consequences ; even such 
as will, in time, bring the poor Americans out of their 
Graves, and make them live." 2 

Again he says : — 

" May it not with more or equal strength be argued New 
Jerusalem is not the same with Jerusalem : but as Jeru- 
salem was to the westward of Babylon, so New Jerusalem 
must be to the westward of Rome, to avoid disturbance in 
the order of mysteries." 3 

i Pages 1, 2. 2 page* 2, 3. 3 Page 31. 



SAMUEL SEW ALL, 1727. 31 

Then quoting the English verses of Herbert, and the 
Latin verses of Cowley, he says : " Not doubting but that 
these authorities, being brought to the king's scales, will 
be over weight." 1 

Afterwards he adduces " learned Mr. Nicholas Fuller," 
who would have it believed that America was first 
peopled "by the posterity of our great-grandfather 
Japheth, though he will not be very strict with us 
as to the particular branch of that wide family." The 
extract from this new authority is remarkable for its 
vindication to Columbus of the name of the new Con- 
tinent. " Quam passim Americam dicunt, vere ac merito 
Columbinam potius dicerent, a magnanimo heroe Chris- 
tophoro Columbo Gennensi primo terrarum illarum in- 
vestigatore atque inventore plane divinitus constituto." 2 
This designation he adopts in his own text : thus, 
" Hinc ergo Columbina primum " ; 3 then again, " Multo 
is quidem proprior est Columbina" ; 4 then again, "Ame- 
rica seu verms Columbina " ; 6 then again, " Eepertam 
fuisse Columbinam." 6 This effort draws from our 
prophet a comment : — 

" But why should a learned Man make all this Dirige for 
Columbus's Name ! What matter is it how America be 
called 1 For Flavio of Malphi in Naples hath, in great 



1 Page 34. 

2 "Which everywhere they call America ; truly and deservedly they 
should say rather Columbina from the magnanimous hero Christopher Co- 
lumbus, the Genoese, first explorer, and plainly divinely appointed discoverer 
of these lands." — Miscell. Sac, Lib. II. cap. 4 in fine. See also cap. 84 
and 85. 

3 " Hence, therefore, Columbina first." 

4 " It is indeed much nearer to Columbina." 

5 " America, or more truly Columbina." 

6 "That Columbina would be found." 



32 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

measure, applied the vertues of the loadstone to the 
Mariners Compass in Vain; the Portugals have found the 
length of Africa's foot in Vain ; the Spaniards sent out 
the Italian Dove, in Vain ; Sir Francis Drake hath sailed 
round the world, and made thorow Lights to it, in Vain ; 
and Hackluyt and Purchas have, with endless Labour, ac- 
quainted Englishmen with these things in Vain : If after 
all, we go about to turn the American Euphrates into a 
Stygian Lake ! The breaking of this One Instrument, spoils 
us of the long expected, and much desired, Consort of Mu- 
stek." 1 

Very soon thereafter he breaks forth in words, printed 
in large Italic type and made prophetic : — 

" Lift up your heads, ye Gates [of Columbina], and 
be ye lift up, ye Everlasting Doors, and the KING of Glory 
shall come in!' 



MARQUIS D'ARGENSON, 1745. 

From the Puritan son of New England, pass now to 
a different character. Bene Louis de Voyer, Marquis 
d'Argenson, a French noble, was born 18th October, 
1694, and died 26th January, 1757, so that his life 
lapped upon the prolonged reigns of Louis XIV. and 
Louis XV. At college the comrade of Voltaire, he was 
ever afterwards the friend and correspondent of this 
great writer. His own thoughts, commended by the 
style of the other, would have placed him among the 
most illustrious of French history. Notwithstanding 
strange eccentricities, he was often elevated, far-sighted, 
and prophetic, above any other Frenchman except Tur- 

1 Pa^e 50. 



MARQUIS D'ARGENSON, 1745. 33 

got. By the courtiers of Versailles lie was called " the 
stupid " (la bite), while Eousseau hailed one of his pro- 
ductions, yet in manuscript, as " the work of Aristides." 
The Duke of Eichelieu, borrowing perhaps from Vol- 
taire, called him " Secretary of State for the Eepublic of 
Plato " ; and the latter pronounced him " the first citizen 
who had ever reached the ministry." i 

Except a brief subordinate service and two years of 
the Cabinet as Minister of Foreign Affairs, his life was 
passed in meditation and composition, especially on 
subjects of government and human improvement. This 
was his great passion. " If being in power," he wrote, 
" I knew a capable man, I would go on all fours to seek 
him, to pray him to serve me as counsellor and tutor." l 
Is not this a lesson to the heedless partisan ? 

He was an active member of a small club devoted to 
hardy speculation, commencing in 1725, and known, from 
its place of meeting at the apartment of one of its mem- 
bers, as I'Entrc-Sol. It is to his honor that he mingled 
here with Abbe Saint-Pierre, and sympathized entirely 
with the many-sided, far-sighted plans of this "good 
man." In the privacy of his journal he records his hom- 
age : " This worthy citizen is not known, and he does 
not know himself. .... He has much intelligence, and 
has given himself to a kind of philosophy profound and 
abandoned by everybody, which is true politics destined 
to procure the greatest happiness of men." 2 In praising 
Saint-Pierre our author furnished a measure of himself. 

The work which excited the admiration of Eousseau 
was Considerations sur le Gouvernement ancien et present 
cle la France, which was read by Voltaire as early as 

1 Journal et M^moires, Tom. I. p. xlvii., Introduction. 

2 Ibid., Feb , 1734, Tom. I. p. 185. 

2* c. 



34 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

1739, but did not see the light till some years after the 
death of the author. It first appeared at Amsterdam in 
1764, and in a short time there were no less than four 
editions in Holland. In 1784 and 1787 a more accu- 
rate edition appeared in France, and soon another at the 
command and expense of the Assembly of Notables. 
Here was a recognition of the people and an inquiry 
how far democracy was consistent with monarchical 
government. Believing much in the people and anx- 
ious for their happiness, he had not ceased to believe 
in kings. The book was contained in' the epigraph 
from the Britannicus of Racine : — 

" Que dans le cours d'un regne florissant, 
Rome soit toujours libre, et Caesar tout-puissant." 

Other works followed, some of which are still in 
manuscript, and others were published tardily, as the 
" Journal and Memoirs," in eight volumes ; " Essays 
in the Style of those of Montaigne " ; " Memoirs of 
State"; "Foreign Affairs, containing Memoirs of my 
Ministry"; "Remarks while Reading " ; and especially, 
" Thoughts on the Reformation of the State " ; 1 also, 
"Thoughts since my Leaving the Ministry." In all 
these there is a communicativeness like that of Saint 
Simon in his Memoirs, and of Rousseau in his Confes- 
sions, without the wonderful talent of either. The ad- 
vanced ideas of the author are constantly conspicuous, 
making him foremost among contemporaries in dis- 
cerning the questions of the future. Even of marriage 
he writes in the spirit of some modern reformers : " It is 
necessary to press the people to marriage, waiting for 
something better.'" This is an instance. His reforms 

1 Pensdes sur la Reformation de l'Etat, 2 vols, in 4to. 



MARQUIS DARGENSON, 1745. 35 

embraced nothing less than the suppression of feudal 
privileges and of the right of primogeniture, uniformity 
of weights and measures, judges irremovable and salaried 
by the State, the dismissal of foreign troops, and the 
residence of the king and his ministers in the capital 
embellished by vast squares, pierced by broad streets, 
" with the hois de Boulogne for country." This is the 
Paris of latter days. Add to this the suppression of 
cemeteries, hospitals, and slaughter-houses in the interior 
of Paris, and many other things, omitting omnibuses but 
including balloons. "Here is something," he records, 
" which will be treated as folly. I am persuaded that 
one of the first famous discoveries to make, and reserved 
perhaps for our age, is to find the art of flying in the 
air." And he proceeds to describe the balloon. 1 

His large nature is manifest in cosmopolitan ideas, and 
the inquiry if it were not well to consider one's self " as 
citizen of the world," more than is the usage. Here his 
soul glows : — 

" What a small corner Europe has on the round earth ! 
What lands remain to inhabit ! See this immense extent of 
three parts of the world, and of undiscovered lands at the 
north and south ! If people went there with other views 
than that disagreeable exclusive property, all these lands 
wonld be inhabited in two centuries. We shall not see this, 
but it will come." 2 

And then, after coupling morals and well-being, he 
announces the true rule: "An individual who shall do 
well will succeed, and who shall do ill will fail ; it is 
the same with nations." This is just and lofty. In such 

1 Journal et M^moires, Tom. T. p. liv., Introduction. 

2 Ibid., p. xxxiii., Introduction. 



36 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

a spirit he cherished plans of political reconstruction in 
foreign nations, especially in Italy. The old Italian cry 
was his : " The barbarians must be driven from Italy " ; 
and he contemplated " one Republic or eternal associa- 
tion of Italian powers, as there was one German, one 
Dutch, one Helvetic," and he called this " the greatest 
affair that had been treated in Europe for a long time." * 
The entry of Italy was to be closed to the Emperor ; and 
he adds : " For ourselves what a happy privation, if we 
are excluded forever from the necessity of sending there 
our armies to triumph, but to perish." 2 

The intelligence that saw Italy so clearly saw Prance 
also, and her exigencies, marking out " a national senate 
composed equally of all the orders of the state," and 
which, on questions of peace and war, would hold the 
kings in check by the necessity of obtaining supplies " ;- 3 
also saw the approaching decay of Turkey, and wished 
to make Greece flourishing once more, to acquire pos- 
session of the holy places, to overcome the barbarians of 
Northern Africa by a union of Christian powers, which 
" well united once in a kind of Christian Republic, nc- 
cording to the project of Henry the Fourth, detailed by 
the Abbe Saint-Pierre, would have something better to 
do than to fight to destroy each other as they do." 
Naturally this singular precocious intelligence reached 
across the Atlantic, and here he became one of our 
prophets. 

"Another great event to arrive upon the round earth 
is this. The English have in Northern America domains 

i Sainte Beuve, Causeries du Lundi, Tom. XII. p. 105 : Le Marquis 
d'Arp;enson. 
2 Journal et M^moires, p. xxxvii., Introduction. 
8 Ibid., p. 363, Appendix. 



MARQUIS D'ARGENSON, 1745. 37 

great, strong, rich, well regulated. There are in New Eng- 
land a parliament, governors, troops, white inhabitants iu 
abundance, riches, and mariners, which is worse. 

" I say that some bright morning these dominations can 
separate from England, rise and erect themselves into an in- 
dependent republic. 

"What will happen from this 1 ? Do people think of this ^ 
A country well regulated by the arts of Europe, in condition 
to communicate with it by the present perfection of its marine, 
and which by this will appropriate our arts in proportion to 
their improvement ; patience ! Such a country in several 
ages will make great progress in population and in polite- 
ness ; such a country will render itself in a short time master 
of America, and especially of the gold-mines." 1 

Then, dwelling on the extension of commercial liberty 
and the improvement of the means of communication, 
he exclaims, with lyrical outburst : — 

" And you will then see how the earth will be beautiful ! 
What culture ! What new arts and new sciences ! What 
safety for commerce ! Navigation will precipitate all the 
peoples towards each other. A day will come when one will 
go in a populous and regulated city of California as one goes 
in the stage-coach of Meaux." 2 

The published works of D'Argenson do not enable us 
to fix the precise date of these remarkable words. They 
are from the "Thoughts on the Reformation of the 
State," but these extend over a long period of time, be- 
ginning as early as 1733, while his intimacy with the 
Abbe Saint-Pierre was at its height. Placing them mid- 



1 Pens^es sur la Reformation de FEtat: Journal et M^moiree, Introduc- 
tion, lv, lvi. 

2 Ibid., lvi. 



38 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

way between the earliest entry of that work and his 
death, their date may be 1745, during his ministry, thus 
preceding Turgot and John Adams. But each spoke 
from his own soul and without prompting. 

TURGOT, 1750, 1770, 1776, 1778. 

Among the illustrious names of France few equal that 
of Turgot. He was a philosopher among ministers, and 
a minister among philosophers. Malesherbes said of 
him, that he had the heart of L'Hopital and the head 
of Bacon. Such a person in public affairs was an epoch 
for his country and for the human race. Had his spirit 
prevailed, the bloody drama of the French Revolution 
would not have occurred, or it would at least have been 
postponed. I think it could not have occurred. He 
was a good man, who sought to carry into government 
the rules of goodness. His career from beginning to 
end was one continuous beneficence. Such a nature 
was essentially prophetic, for he discerned the natural 
laws by which the future is governed. 

He was of an ancient Norman family, whose name 
suggests the god Thor; he was born at Paris, 1727, and 
died, 1781. Being a younger son, he was destined for 
the Church, and commenced his studies as an ecclesias- 
tic at the ancient Sorbonne. Before registering an 
irrevocable vow, he announced his repugnance to the 
profession, and turned aside to other pursuits. Law, 
literature, science, humanity, government, now engaged 
his attention. He associated himself with the authors 
of the Encyclopaedia, and became one of its contribu- 
tors. In other writings he vindicated especially the 
virtue of toleration. Not merely a theorist, he soon 



TURGOT, 1750. 39 

arrived at the high post of Intendant of Limousin, where 
he developed talent for administration and sympathy 
with the people. The potato came into that province 
through him. But he continued to employ his pen, 
especially on questions of political economy, which he 
treated as a master. On the accession of Louis XVI. 
he was called to the cabinet as Minister of the Marine, 
and shortly afterwards gave up tins place to be the head 
of the finances. Here he began a system of rigid econ- 
omy, founded on curtailment of expenses and enlarge- 
ment of resources. The latter was obtained especially 
by removal of disabilities from trade, whether at home 
or abroad, and the substitution of a single tax on land 
for a complex multiplicity of taxes. The enemies of 
progress were too strong at that time, and the king dis- 
missed the reformer. Good men in France became 
anxious for the future ; Voltaire, in his distant retreat, 
gave a shriek of despair, and addressed to Turgot re- 
markable verses entitled Epitre a un Homme. Worse 
still, the good edicts of the minister were rescinded, and 
society was put back. 

The discarded minister gave himself to science, lit- 
erature, and friendship. He welcomed Franklin to 
France and to immortality in a Latin verse of marvel- 
lous felicity. He was already the companion of the 
liberal spirits who were doing so much for knowledge 
and for reform. By writing and by conversation he 
exercised a constant influence. His "ideas" seem to 
illumine the time. We may be content to follow him 
in saying, " The glory of arms cannot compare with the 
happiness of living in peace." He anticipated our defi- 
nition of a republic, when he said " it was formed upon 
the equality of all the citizens" — good words, not yet 



40 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

practically verified in all our States. Such a govern- 
ment he, living under a monarchy, bravely pronounced 
the best of all ; but he added that he " had never known 
a constitution truly republican." This was in 1778. 
With similar plainness he announced that " the destruc- 
tion of the Ottoman empire would be a real good for all 
the nations of Europe," and, he added still further, for 
humanity also, because it would involve the abolition of 
negro slavery, and because to strip " our oppressors is 
not to attack, but to vindicate, the common rights of 
humanity." With such thoughts and aspirations, the 
prophet died. 

But I have no purpose of writing a biography, or even 
a character. All that I intend is an introduction to 
Turgot's prophetic words. When only twenty-three 
years of age, while still an ecclesiastic at the Sorbonne, 
the future minister delivered a discourse on the Progress 
of the Human Mind, in which, after describing the com- 
mercial triumphs of the ancient Phoenicians, covering 
the coasts of Greece and Asia with their colonies, he 
lets drop these remarkable words : — 

" Les colonies sont comme des fruits qui ne tiennent a, 
l'arbre que jusqu'a leur maturity ; devenues suffisantes a 
elles-memes, elles firent ce que fit depuis Carthage, — ce 
que /era un jour V Amerique." 1 

" Colonies are like fruits, which hold to the tree only un- 
til their maturity ; when sufficient for themselves, they did 
that which Carthage afterwards did, — that which some day 
America will do." 

On this most suggestive declaration, Dupont de ISTe- 

1 Turgot, GEuvres, Tom. II. p. 66. See also Condorcet, (Euvres, Tom. 
IV., Vie de Turgot ; Louis Blane, Histoire de la Revolution Francaise, Tom. 
I pp. 527-533. 



TURGOT, 1750. 41 

mours, the editor of Turgot's works, in 1808, remarks in 
a note : — 

"It was in 1750 that M. Turgot, being then only twenty- 
three years old, and devoted in a seminary to the study of 
theology, divined, foresaw the revolution which has formed 
the United States, — which has detached them from the 
European power apparently the most capable of retaining its 
colonies under its domination." 

At the time Turgot wrote, Canada was a French pos- 
session ; but his words are as applicable to this colony 
as to the United States. When will the fruit be ripe ? 

In contrast with this precise prediction, and yet in 
harmony with it, are the words of Montesquieu, in his 
ingenious work, which saw the light in 1748, two years 
before the discourse of Turgot. In the famous chapter, 
"How the laws contribute to form the manners, cus- 
toms, and character of a nation," we have a much- 
admired picture of a "free nation," — "inhabiting an 
island," — where, without naming England, it is easy to 
recognize her greatness and glory. And here we meet a 
Delphic passage, also without a name, pointing to the 
British Colonies : * — 

" If this nation sent out colonies, it would do it more to 
extend its commerce than its empire. 

"As people like to establish elsewhere what is found es- 
tablished at home, it would give to the people of its colo- 
nies its own form of government, and this government 
carrying with it prosperity, we should see great peoples form 
themselves in the very forests which it sent them to inhabit." 

The future greatness of the Colonies is insinuated 

i De I'Esprit des Lois, Livre XIX. Chap. XXVII. 



42 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

rather than foretold, and here the prophetic voice is si- 
lent. Nothing is said of the impending separation and 
the beginning of a new nation ; so that plainly Montes- 
quieu saw our future less than Turgot. 

The youthful prophet did not lose his penetrating 
vision with years. In the same spirit and with im- 
mense vigor he wrote to the English philosopher, Josiah 
Tucker, September 17, 1770: — 

" As a citizen of the world, I see with joy the approach 
of an event which, more than all the books of philosophers, 
will dissipate the phantom of commercial jealousy. / 
mean the separation of your colonies from the mother 
country, which will be followed soon by that of all 
America from Europe. It is then that the discovery of 
this part of the world will become to us truly useful. It is 
then that it will multiply our enjoyments much more 
abundantly than when we purchased them with torrents of 
blood. The English, the French, the Spaniai'ds, will use 
sugar, coffee, indigo, and will sell their products precisely as 
the Swiss do to-day, and they will have also, as the Swiss 
people, the advantage that this sugar, this coffee, this indigo, 
will serve no longer as a pretext for intriguers to precipitate 
their nation into ruinous wars and to oppress them with 
taxes." 1 

It is impossible not to feel in this passage the sure 
grasp of our American destiny. How clearly and cou- 
rageously he announces the inevitable future ! But the 
French philosopher-statesman again took the tripod. 

This was in the discharge of his duties as Minister of 
the Crown and in reply to a special application. His 

1 (Euvres (ed. Daire), Tom. II. p. 803. 



TURGOT, 1778. 43 

noble opinion is dated 6th April, 1776. Its character 
appears in a few sentences : — 

" The present war will probably end in the absolute inde- 
pendence of the colonies, and that event will certainly be the 
epoch of the greatest revolution in the commerce and politics not 

of England only, but of all Europe When the English 

themselves shall recognize the independence of their colonies, 
every mother country will be forced in like manner to exchange 
its dominion over its colonies for bonds of friendship and fra- 
ternity When the total separation of America shall have 

healed the European nations of the jealousy of commerce, there 
will exist among men one great cause of war the less, and it 
is very difficult not to desire an event which is to accomplish 
this good for the human race." * 

His letter to the English Dr. Price, on the American 
Constitution, abounds in profound observations and in 
prophecy. It was written just at the time when France 
openly joined against England in our war of Indepen- 
dence, and is dated March 22, 1778, 2 but did not see the 
light until 1784, some years after the death of the au- 
thor, when it was published by Dr. Price. 3 Its criti- 
cism of the American constitutions aroused John Adams 
to his elaborate work in their " Defence." 4 

Of our Union before the adoption of the National 
Constitution he writes : — 

" In the general union of the provinces among themselves 
I do not see a coalition, a fusion of all the parts, making 
but one body, one and homogeneous. It is nothing but an 

1 Bancroft, History of the United States, Vol. VIII. pp. 337, 338. 

2 Turcot, (Euvres fed. Daire), Tom. II. 805-811. 

3 Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution. Appendix. 

4 Works, Vol. IV. 278-281, where is found the larger part of the letter of 
Tunrot. 



44 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

aggregation of parts always too separated, and preserving 
always a tendency to division, through the diversity of laws, 
manners, opinions, — through the inequality of their actual 
forces, — more also by the inequality of their ulterior pro- 
gress. It is nothing but a copy of the Dutch Republic ; 
but this never had anything to fear as the American Re- 
public from possible increase of some of its provinces. All 
this edifice is supported down to this time on the false basis 
of the very ancient and very vulgar politics, on the preju- 
dice that nations and provinces can have interests, as 
nations and provinces, different from those of individuals to 
be free and to defend their property against brigands and 
conquerors ; a pretended interest to have more commerce 
than others, not to buy merchandise abroad, to force for- 
eigners to consume their productions and their manufac- 
tures ; a pretended interest to have a vaster territory, to 
acquire this or that province, this or that island, this or 
that village ; an interest to inspire fear in other nations ; 
interest to surpass them in the glory of arms, in that of arts 
and sciences." 

Among the evils to be overcome are, in the Southern 
Colonies too great an inequality of fortunes, and espe- 
cially the large number of black slaves, whose slavery 
is incompatible with a good political constitution, and 
who, even when restored to liberty, will cause embar- 
rassment by forming two nations in the same State. In 
all the Colonies he deprecates prejudice, attachment to 
established forms, the preservation of certain taxes, the 
fear of those which should be substituted, the vanity of 
the Colonies Avho deem themselves most powerful, and 
the wretched beginning, of national pride. Happily he 
adds : " I think the Americans forced to aggrandizement, 
not by Avar, but by husbandry." And he then proceeds 
to his aspirations : — 



TUEGOT, 1750. 45 

" It is impossible not to offer vows that this people may +-" 
arrive at all the prosperity of which it is susceptible. It is 
the hope of the human race. It can become its model. It 
must prove to the world, by the fact, that men can be free 
and tranquil, and can dispense with the chains of all kinds 
which the tyrants and charlatans of every cloth have pre- 
tended to impose under the pretext of public good. It 
must give the example of political liberty, of religious lib- 
erty, of commercial and industrial liberty. The asylum 
which it opens to the oppressed of all nations must console 
the earth. The facility it affords for escape from a bad 
government will force the European governments to be just 
and enlightened. The rest of the world, little by little, will 
open their eyes to the nothingness of the illusions in which 
politicians have nursed them. To this end it is necessary 
that America should take guaranties, and should not be- 
come, as so many of your ministerial writers have repeated, 
an image of an Europe, a heap of divided Powers, disputing 
about territory or commercial profits, and continually ce- 
menting the slavery of people with their own blood." 

After these admirable thoughts, so full of wisdom 
and prophecy, Turgot alludes to the impending war 
between France and England : — 

" Our two nations are going to do each other reciprocally 
much evil, probably without either obtaining any real ad- 
vantage. The increase of debts and liabilities and the ruin 
of a great many citizens will be, perhaps, the only result. 
England seems nearer to this than France. If instead of 
this war you had been able to act in good spirit from the 
first moment, — if it had been given to government to do in 
advance what infallibly it will be forced to do later, — if 
national opinion had permitted } T our government to antici- 
pate events, — and, supposing that it had foreseen them, it 
had been able to consent at once to the Independence of 



46 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

America without making war on anybody, — I am firmly 
convinced that your nation would have losb nothing by 
the change. It will lose now what it has already expended, 
and what it shall expend besides. It will experience for 
some time a great falling off in its commerce, great domestic 
disturbances, if it is forced to bankruptcy, and, whatever 
may arrive, a great diminution in its influence abroad. 
But this last matter is of small importance in the real hap- 
piness of a people. I do not think it can make you become 
a contemptible nation, and throw you into slavery. 

"Your present troubles, your future happiness, will be at- 
tributed to a necessary amputation, which is, perhaps, the 
only means of saving you from the gangrene of luxury and 
corruption. If in your agitations you could correct your 
Constitution by rendering elections annual, by apportioning 
the right of representation so that it shall be more equal 
and more proportioned to the interests of those represented, 
you would gain from this revolution as much, perhaps, as 
America ; for }-our liberty would remain, and with this and 
by this your other losses would repair themselves." 

Pleading such words, the heart throbs and the pulse 
beats. Government inspired by such a spirit would be- 
come divine, nations would live at peace together, and 
people everywhere be happy. 



HORACE WALPOLE, 1754, 1777, 1779. 

Most unlike Turgot in character, but with something 
of the same spirit of prophecy, and associated in time, 
was Horace Walpole, youngest son of England's re- 
markable Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole. With 
the former life was serious always, and human improve- 
ment the perpetual passion ; with the latter there was 



HORACE WALPOLE, 1754. 47 

a constant desire for amusement, and the world was 
little more than a curious gimcrack. 

Horace Walpole was born 5th October, 1717, and 
died 2d March, 1797, being at his death Earl of Or- 
ford. According to his birth he was a man of fashion ; 
for a time a member of Parliament ; a man of letters 
always. To his various talents he added an aggre- 
gation of miscellaneous tastes, of which his house at 
Strawberry Hill was an illustration, — being an elegant 
" Old Curiosity Shop," with pictures, books, manuscripts, 
prints, armor, china, historic relics, and art in all its 
forms, which he had collected at no small outlay of time 
and money. Though aristocratic in life, he boasted 
that his principles were not monarchical. On the 
two sides of his bed were hung engravings of Magna 
Charta and of the Sentence of Charles I., the latter 
with the inscription Major Charta. Sleeping between 
two such memorials, he might be suspected of sympathy 
with America, although the aristocrat was never absent. 
His Memoirs, Journals, Anecdotes of Painters in Eng- 
land, and other works, are less famous than his multi- 
farious correspondence, which is the best in English 
literature, and, according to French judgment, nearer 
than any other of our language to that of Madame de 
Sevigne, whom he never wearied in praising. It is 
free, easy, gossipy, historic, and spicy. 

But I deal with him now only as a prophet. And 
I begin with his "Memoirs of the last Ten Years of 
the Keign of George II.," where we find the record 
that the Colonists were seeking independence. This 
occurs in his description of the Duke of Newcastle as 
Secretary of State for the Colonies, during the long 
Walpole administration. Illustrating what he calls 



48 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

the Duke's " mercurial inattention," he says : " It would 
not be credited what reams of papers, representations, 
memorials, petitions from that quarter of the world 
[the Colonies], lay mouldering and unopened in his 
office " ; and then, showing his ignorance, he narrates 
how, when it was hinted that there should be some 
defence for Annapolis, he replied with evasive, lisping 
hurry : " Annapolis, Annapolis ! yes, Annapolis must 
be defended, — to be sure, Annapolis should be defend- 
ed ; — where is Annapolis ? " But this negligence did 
not prevent him from exalting the prerogative of the 
crown ; and here the author says : — 

" The instructions to Sir Danvers Osborn, a new governor 
of New York, seemed better calculated for the latitude of 
Mexico and for a Spanish tribunal than for a free, rich 
British settlement, and in such opulence and of such haugh- 
tiness, that suspicions had long been conceived of their medi- 
tating to throw off their dependence on their mother country." 

This stands in the Memoirs under date of March, 
1754, where the editor in a note remarks, " If, as the 
author asserts, this was written at the time, it is a very 
remarkable passage." * By the will of the author the 
book was " to be kept unopened and unsealed " until a 
certain person named should attain the age of twenty- 
five years. It was published in 1822. Perhaps the 
honesty of this entry will be better appreciated when 
it is noted that, only a few pages later, 2 Washing- 
ton, whom the author afterwards admired, is spoken 
of as " this brave braggart," who " learned to blush for 
his rhoclomontade." / 

1 Vol. I. p. 344. 

2 Page 347. See aluo Letter to Horace Mann, 6th October, 1754. Letters 
by Cunningham, Vol. II. p, 398. 



HORACE WALPOLE, 1774. 49 

As the difficulties with the Colonies increased, he 
became more sympathetic and prophetic. In a letter 
to Horace Mann, 24th February, 1774, he wrote: — 

" We have no news, public or private ; but there is an 
ostrich-egg laid in America, where the Bostonians have 
canted three hundred chests of tea into the ocean ; for 

they will not drink tea with our Parliament Lord 

Chatham talked of conquering America in Germany. 1 
believe England will be conquered some day in New England 
or Bengal." 

In May, 1774, his sympathies again appear: — 

"Nothing was more shocking than the king's laughing 
and saying at his levee that he had as lief fight the. Bos- 
tonians as the French. It was only to be paralleled by 
James II. sporting on JefFries's campaign in the West." 1 

And, under date of 28th May, 1775, we have his 
record of the encounter at Lexington, with the reflec- 
tion : — 

" Thus was the civil war begun and a victory, the first 
fruits of it on the side of the Americans, whom Lord Sand- 
wich had had the folly and rashness to proclaim cowards." 2 

His letters to the Countess of Ossory, written during 
the war, show his irrepressible sentiments. Thus under 
date of 9th November, 1775 : — 

" I think this country undone almost beyond redemption. 
Victory in any war but a civil one fascinates mankind with 
a vision of glory. What should we gain by triumph itself? 
Would America laid waste, deluged with blood, plundered, 

1 Journal of the Reign of King George III. from 1771 to 1783, edited 
by Doran, Vol. I. p. 366. 

2 Ibid., p. 491. 

3 D 



50 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

enslaved, replace America flourishing, rich, and free? Do 
we want to reign over it, as the Spaniards over Peru, de- 
populated 1 Are desolate regions preferable to commercial 
cities V 1 

Then under date of 6th July, 1777 : — 

" My humble opinion is, that we shall never recover 
America and that France will take care that we shall never 
recover ourselves." 2 

"Friday night late," 5th December, 1777, he breaks 
forth : — 

" Send for Lord Chatham ! they had better send for 
General Washington, madam, — or at least for our troops 

back No, madam, we do not want ministers that 

would protract our difficulties. I look on them but as 
beginning now, and am far from thinking that there is any 
man or set of men able enough to extricate us. / own there 
are very able Englishmen left, but they happen to be on t'other 
side of the Atlantic.. If his Majesty hopes to find them here, 
I doubt he will be mistaken." 8 

"Thursday night," 11th December, 1777, his feelings 
overflow in no common language : — 

" Was ever proud insolent nation sunk so low % Burke 
and Charles Fox told him [Lord North] the Administration 
thought of nothing but keeping their places ; and so they 
will, and the members their pensions, and the nation its 
infamy. Were I Franklin, I would order the Cabinet 
Council to come to me at Paris with ropes about their 
necks, and then kick them back to St. James's. 

i Vol. I. p 200: Letter LXXIV. 

2 Ibid., p. 278: Letter CVI. 

3 Ibid., pp. 315, 316: Letter CXX. 



JOHN ADAMS, 1755. 51 

" Well, madam, as I told Lord Ossory t'other day, I 
am satisfied. Old England is safe, that is, America, whither 
the true English retired under Charles I. This is Nova 

Scotia, and I care not what becomes of it Adieu, 

madam ! I am at last not sorry you have no son, and your 
daughters, I hope, will be married to Americans, and not in 
this dirty, despicable island." x 

All this is elevated by his letter of 17th February, 
1779, where he says: — 

" Liberty has still a continent to exist in. T do not care 
a straw who is minister in this abandoned country. It 
is the good old cause of freedom that I have at heart." 2 

Thus with constancy, where original principle was 
doubtless quickened by party animosity, did Horace 
Walpole maintain the American cause and predict a 
new home for Liberty. 

JOHN ADAMS, 1755, 1765, 1776, 1780, 1783, 1785, 1813. 

Next in time among the prophets was John Adams, 
who has left on record at different dates predictions 
showing a second-sight of no common order. Of his 
life I need say nothing, except that he was born 19th 
October, 1735, and died 4th July, 1826. I mention the 
predictions in the order of utterance. 

1. While teaching a school at AVorcester, and when 
under twenty years of age, he wrote a letter to one. of 
his youthful companions, bearing date 12th October, 
1755, which is a marvel of foresight. Fifty-two years 
afterwards, when already much of its prophecy had been 

1 Vol. I. pp. 318, 319: Letter CXXI. 

2 Ibid., p. 337: Letter CXXIX. 



52 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

fulfilled, the original was returned to its author by the 
son of his early comrade and correspondent, Nathan 
Webb, who was at the time dead. After remarking 
gravely on the rise and fall of nations, with illustrations 
from Carthage and Eome, he proceeds : — 

" England began to increase in power and magnificence, 
and is now the greatest nation of the globe. Soon after the 
Reformation, a few people came over into this New World 
for conscience' sake. Perhaps this apparently trivial inci- 
dent may transfer the great seat of empire to America. It 
looks likely to me ; for if we can remove the turbulent Gal- 
lics, our people, according to the exactest computations, 
will, in another century, become more numerous than Eng- 
land itself. Should this be the case, since we have, I may 
say, all the naval stores of the nations in our hands, it will 
be easy' to obtain the mastery of the seas ; and then the 
united force of all Europe will not be able to subdue us. 
The only way to keep us from setting up for ourselves is to 
disunite us. Divide et impera. Keep us in distinct colo- 
nies, and then, some great men in each colony desiring the 
monarchy of the whole, they will destroy each other's influ- 
ence, and keep the country in equilibrio." x 

On this his son, John Quincy -Adams, famous for im- 
portant service and high office, remarks : — 

" Had the political part of it been written by the minister 
of state of a European monarchy, at the close of a long life 
spent in the government of nations, it would have been pro- 
nounced worthy of the united wisdom of a Burleigh, a Sully, 

or an Oxenstiern In one bold outline he has exhibited 

by anticipation a long succession of prophetic history, the 
fulfilment of which is barely yet in progfess, responding 

i Works, Vol. I. p. 23. See also Vol. IX. pp. 591, 592. 



JOHN ADAMS, 1756. 53 

exactly hitherto to his foresight, but the full accomplishment 
of which is reserved for the development of after ages. The 
extinction of the power of France in America, the union of 
the British North American Colonies, the achievement of 
their independence, and the establishment of their ascen- 
dency in the community of civilized nations by the means of 
their naval power, are all foreshadowed in this letter, with a 
clearness of perception and a distinctness of delineation 
which time has done little more than to convert into his- 
torical fact." 1 

2. Another beautiful instance followed ten years 
later. In the beginning of 1765, Jeremy Gridley, the 
eminent lawyer of colonial days, formed a law club or 
sodality at Boston, for the mutual improvement of its 
members. Here John Adams produced the original 
sketch of his " Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal 
Law 7 ," which appeared in the " Boston Gazette " of 
August, 1768, was reprinted in London about 1782, and 
in Philadelphia in 1783. 2 The sketch began : — 

" This sodality has given rise to the following speculation 
of my own, which I commit to writing as hints for future 
inquiries rather than as a satisfactory theory.'-' 3 

In this dissertation, the writer dwells especially upon 
the settlers of British America, of whom he says : — 

V After their arrival here, they began their settlement 
and formed their plan both of ecclesiastical and civil gov- 
ernments in direct opposition to the canon and federal 
systems." 4 

This excellent statement was followed in the original 

1 Works, Vol. I. pp. 24, 25. 3 Ibid., Vol. I. pp. 65, 66. 

2 Ibid., Vol. III. p. 447. 4 ibid., Vol III. p 451. 



54 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

sketch, communicated to the sodality, by this passage, 
which does not appear in the printed dissertation : — 

" I always consider the settlement of America with 
reverence, as the opening of a grand scene and design in 
Providence for the illumination of the ignorant and the 
emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the 
earth." x 

On these prophetic words, his son, John Quincy 
Adams, remarks : — 

" This sentence was perhaps omitted from an impression 
that it might be thought to savor not merely of enthusiasm 
but of extravagance. Who would now deny that this mag- 
nificent anticipation had been already to a great degree 
realized] Who does not now see that the accomplishment 
of this great object is already placed beyond all possibility 
of failure]" 2 

His grandson, Charles Francis Adams, alluding to 
the changes which took place in the original sketch, 
says : — 

" As not infrequently happens, however, in this process, 
one stray passage was lost by it, which at this time must 
be regarded as the most deserving of any to be remem- 
bered." 8 

Thus again, at an early day, did this prophet discern 
the future. How true it is that the mission of this Ee- 
public is " the illumination of the ignorant," and still 
further " the emancipation of the slavish part of man- 
kind all over the earth." Universal enlightenment and 
universal emancipation ! And the first great stage was 
National Independence. 

1 Works, Vol. I. p. 66; Vol. III. p. 452. 3 Ibid., Vol. III. p. 448. 

2 Ibid., Vol. I. p. 66. 



JOHN ADAMS, 1776. 55 

3. The Declaration of Independence bears date 4th 
July, 1776, for on that day it was signed ; but the vote 
which determined it was on the 2d July. On the 3d 
July, John Adams, in a letter to his wife, wrote : — 

" Yesterday the greatest question was decided which ever 
was debated in America, and a greater, perhaps, never was 

nor will be decided among men I am surprised at 

the suddenness as well as greatness of this revolution. 
Britain has been tilled with folly, and America with wis- 
dom. At least this is my judgment. Time must deter- 
mine. It is the ivill of Heaven that the two countries should 

be sundered forever The day is past. The second 

day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in 
the history of America. / am apt to believe that it will be 
celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary 
festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of 
deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. 
It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with 
shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, 
from one end of this continent to the other, from this time 
forward, forevermore. You will think me transpoi'ted with 
enthusiasm, but I am not. I am well aware of the toil and 
blood and treasure that it will cost us to maintain this 
Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet, 
through all the gloom, I can see the ray of ravishing light and 
glory ; and that posterity ivill triumph in that days transac- 
tion, even although we should rue it, which I trust in God 
we shall not." 1 

Here is a comprehensive prophecy, first, that the two 
countries would be separated forever ; secondly, that 
the anniversary of Independence would be celebrated 
as a- great annual festival ; and, thirdly, that' posterity 
would triumph in this transaction, where, through all 

1 Works, Vol. I. pp. 230, 232. 



56 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

the gloom, shone rays of ravishing light and glory, — all 
of which has been fulfilled to the letter. Eecent events 
give to the Declaration additional importance. For a 
long time its great promises that all men are equal, and 
that rightful government stands only on the consent of 
the governed, were disowned by our country. Now that 
at last they are beginning to prevail, there is increased 
reason to celebrate the day on which the mighty Dec- 
laration was made, and new occasion for triumph in the 
rays of ravishing light and glory. 

4. Here is another prophetic passage in a letter dated 
at Paris, loth July, 1780, and addressed to the Count 
de Vergennes of France, pleading the cause of the colo- 
nists : — 

" The United States of America are a great and powerful 
people, whatever European statesmen may think o'f them. 
If we take into our estimate the numbers and the character 
of her people, the extent, variety,' and fertility of her soil, 
her commerce, and her skill and materials for shipbuilding, 
and her seamen, excepting France, Spain, England, Ger- 
many, and Russia, there is not a state in Europe so power- 
ful. Breaking off such a nation as this from the English 
so suddenly, and uniting it so closely with France, is one 
of the most extraordinary events that ever happened among 
mankind." 1 

Perhaps this may be considered statement rather 
than prophecy ; but it illustrates the prophetic character 
of the writer. 

5. While at Amsterdam, in 1780, Mr. Adams met a 
gentleman whom he calls " the giant of the law," Mr. 
Calkoen. After an unsatisfactory attempt at conversa- 
tion, where neither spoke the language of the other, it 

i Works, Vol. VII. p. 527. 



JOHN ADAMS, 1780. 57 

was arranged that the latter should propound a series 
of questions in writing, which the American minister 
undertook to answer. The questions were in Dutch, 
the answers in English. Among the questions was 
this : " Whether America in and of itself, by means of 
purchasing or exchanging the productions of the sev- 
eral provinces, would be able to continue the war for 
six, eight, or ten years, even if they were entirely de- 
prived of the trade with Europe, or their allies, ex- 
hausted by the war and forced to make a separate 
peace, were to leave them ? " To this question our 
prophet replied : — 

" This is an extreme case Why, then, should we 

put cases that we know can never happen 1 However, I can 
inform yon that the case was often put before the war broke 
out ; and I have heard the common formers in America 
reasoning upon these cases seven years ago. I have heard 
them say, if Great Britain could build a wall of brass a 
thousand feet high all along the sea-coast, at low-water 
mark, we can live and be happy. America is most undoubt- 
edly capable of being the most independent country upon earth. 
It produces everything for the necessity, comfort, and con- 
venience of life, and many of the luxuries too. So that if 
there were an eternal separation between Eui'ope and Amer- 
ica, the inhabitants of America would not only live but 
multiply, and, for what I know, be wiser, better, and hap- 
pier than they will be as it is." 1 

Here is an assertion of conditions essential to inde- 
pendence over " the most independent country upon 
earth," with a promise that " the inhabitants will 
multiply." 

^ 1 Works, Vol. VII. p. 275. Twenty-six Letters upon Interesting Sub- 
jects respecting the Revolution of America, written in Holland in the year 
MDCCLXX. 

3* 



58 PKOPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

6. Ill an official letter to the President of Congress, 
dated at Amsterdam, 5th September, 1780, the same 
writer, while proposing an American Academy for refin- 
ing, improving, and ascertaining the English language, 
predicts the extension of this language : — 

" English is destined to be in the next and succeeding centu- 
ries more generally the language of the world than Latin was 
in the last or French is in the present age. The reason of 
this is obvious, — because the increasing population in 
America, and their universal connection and correspondence 
with all nations, will, aided by the influence of England in 
the world, whether great or small, force their language into 
general use, in spite of all the obstacles that may be thrown 
in their way, if any such there should be." * 

In another letter of unofficial character, dated at 
Amsterdam, 23d September, 1780, he thus repeats his 
prophecy : — 

"You must know / have undertaken to prophesy that 
English will be the most respectable language in the world, 
and the most universally read and spoken in the next century, 
if not before the close of this. American population will in 
the next age produce a greater number of persons who will 
speak English than any other language, and these persona 
will have more general acquaintance and conversation with 
all other nations than any other people." 2 

David Hume in a letter to Gibbon, 24th October, 
1767, had already written: — 

" Our solid and increasing establishments in America, 
where wo need less dread the inundation of barbarians, 
promise a superior stability and duration to the English 
language.'''' 3 

i Works, Vol. VII. p. 250. 2 Ibid., Vol. IX. p. 510. 

3 Gibbon, Memoirs, Chap. VII., Notes and Additions. 



JOHN ADAMS, 1780. 59 

But these more moderate words which did credit 
to the discernment of the philosopher-historian were 
then unpublished. 

The* prophecy of John Adams is already accom- 
plished. Of all the European languages, English is 
most extensively spoken. Through England and the 
United States it has become the language of commerce, 
which, sooner or later, must embrace the globe. The 
German philologist, Grimm, has followed our American 
prophet in saying that it " seems chosen, like its people, 
to rule in future times in a still greater degree in all 
the corners of the earth." 1 

Another field was opened by a European correspond- 
ent, John Luzac, who writes from Leyden, under date of 
14th September, 1780, that, in pleading the cause of 
American Independence, he has twenty times encoun- 
tered, from sensible and educated people, an objection 
which he sets forth in French as follows: — 

"Yes, but if America becomes free, she will some day 
give the law to Europe. She will take away our islands, 
and our colonies at Guiana ; she will seize all the Antilles ; 
she will engulf Mexico, even Peru, Chili, and Brazil ; she 
will appropriate our freighting commerce ; she will pay 
her benefactors with ingratitude." 2 

To this Mr. Adams replied, in a letter from Amster- 
dam, 15th September, 1780 : — 

" I have met often in Europe with the same species of 
reasoners that you describe ; but I find they are not 
numerous. Among men of reflection the sentiment is 
generally different, and that no power in Europe has any- 
thing to fear from America. The principal interest of 

1 Keith Johnston, Physical Atlas, p. 114. 

2 Works, Vol. VIII. p. 254. 



GO PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

America for many centuries to come will be landed, and 
her chief occupation agriculture. Manufactures and com- 
merce will be but secondary objects and always subservient 
to the other. America will be the country to produce raw 
materials for manufacture ; but Europe will be the country 
of manufactures, and the commerce of America can never 
increase but in a certain proportion to the growth of its 
agriculture, until its whole territory is filled up with in 
habitants, which will not be in some hundreds of years." 

After enumerating tar, iron, and timber as American 
articles, he says : — 

" In fact, the Atlantic is so long and difficult a navigation, 
that the Americans will never be able to afford to carry 
to the European market great quantities of these articles." 

If the prophet fails here, he is none the less wise 
in the suggestion with which he closes : — 

" If Europe cannot prevent, or, rather, if any particular 
nation of Europe cannot prevent, the independence of 
America, then the sooner her independence is acknowl- 
edged the better; the less likely she will be to become 
warlike, enterprising, and ambitious. The truth is, how- 
ever, that America can never unite in any war but a 
defensive one." * 

Had the prophet foreseen the increasing facilities 
of commerce, the triumphs of steam, the floating masses 
of transportation, the wonders of navigation, quickened 
and guided by the telegraph, and to these had he added 
the diversified industry of the country, extending, ex- 
panding, and prevailing, his remarkable vision, which 
already saw so much, would have viewed other glories 
in assured certainty. 

1 Works, Vol. VII. p. 256. 



JOHN ADAMS, 1787. 61 

8. There is another prophecy, at once definite and 
broad, from the same eminent quarter. In a letter dated 
London, 17th October, 1785, and addressed to John 
Jay, at the time Secretary for Foreign Affairs under 
the Confederation, John Adams reveals his conviction 
of the importance of France to us, " while England 
held a province in America " ; 1 and then, in another 
letter, dated 21st October, 1785, reports the saying of 
people about him, " that Canada and Nova Scotia 
must soon be ours ; there must be war for it ; they 
know how it will end, but the sooner the better. 
This dune, we shall be forever at peace; till then, 
never." 2 These intimations foreshadow the prophecy 
found in the Preface to his " Defence of the 
American Constitutions," written in London, while 
Minister there, and dated Grosvenor Square, 1st Janu- 
ary, 1787: — ■ 

" The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, 
the first example of governments erected on the simple 

principles of nature Thirteen governments thus 

founded on the natural authority of the people alone, 
without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are 
destined to spread, over the northern part of that whole 
quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of 
the rights of mankind. The experiment is made, and has 
completely succeeded." 3 

Here is foretold nothing less than that our system 
of government is to embrace the whole continent of 
North America. 

9. This series may be concluded by other words, gen- 
eral in character, but deeply prophetic, showing a con- 

1 Works, Vol. VIII. p. 322. 3 Ibid., Vol. IV. p. 293. 

2 Ibid. p. 33. 



62 HtOPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

stant sense of the unfolding grandeur and influence of 
the Republic. 

The first is from the concluding chapter of the work 
last cited, and in harmony with the Preface : — 

"A prospect into futurity in America is like contem- 
plating the heavens through the telescopes of Herschel. 
Objects stupendous in their magnitudes and motions strike 
us from all quarters and fill us with amazement." 1 

Thus, also, he writes to Thomas Jefferson, November 
15, 1813: — 

" Many hundred years must roll away before we shall be 
corrupted. Our pure, virtuous, public-spirited, federative re- 
public will last forever, govern the globe, and introduce the per- 
fection of man." 2 

Then, again, in a letter to H. Niles, 13th February, 
1818: — 

" The American Revolution was not a common event. 
Its effects and consequences have already been awful over 
a great part of the globe. And when and where are they 
to cease ? " 3 

The prophetic spirit which filled the " visions " of 
youth continued in the "dreams" of age. Especially 
was he constant in foreseeing the widening reach of 
the great Revolution he had helped at its beginning; 
and this arrested the attention of his eloquent eulogist 
at Faneuil Hall. 4 

1 Work*, Vol. VI. p. 218. 

2 Complete Works of Jefferson, Vol. VI. p. 25£. 
8 Works, Vol X. p. 282. 

4 Daniel Webster's Discourse in commemoration of the Lives and Ser- 
vices of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, delivered in Faneuil Hall, 
Boston, August 2, 1826: Works, Vol. I. p. 139. 



MAEQUIS DE MONTCALM, 1758. 63 

MARQUIS DE MONTCALM, 1758, 1759. 

If I enter the name of the Marquis de Montcalm on 
this list, it is because prophetic words have been attrib- 
uted to him, which at different periods have attracted 
'no small attention. He was born near ISTismes in 
France, 1712, and died at Quebec, 13th September, 
1759, being at the time commander of the French 
forces in Canada. As a soldier he was the peer of his 
opponent, Wolfe, who perished in the same battle, and 
they have since enjoyed a common fame. 

In 1777, amidst the heats of our Eevolutionary con- 
test, a publication was put forth by Almon, the pam- 
phleteer, in French and English on opposite pages, 
entitled " Letters from the Marquis de Montcalm, Gov- 
ernor-General of Canada in the years 1757, 1758, and 
1759," and the soldier reappeared as prophet. 

The first letter is addressed to M. de Berryer, First 
Commissioner of the Marine of France, and purports to 
be dated at Montreal, 4th April, 1757. It contains the 
copy of an elaborate communication from " S. J." of 
Boston, proposing a scheme for undermining the power 
of Great Britain in the Colonies, by free trade with 
France through Canada, and predicting that " all our col- 
onies in less than ten years will catch fire." 1 In trans- 
mitting this letter Montcalm did little more than indorse 
its sentiments ; but in his second letter to the same per- 
son, dated at Montreal, 1st October, 1758, he says : — 

"All these informations which I every day receive con- 
firm me in my opinion that England will one day lose her 
colonies on the continent of America; and if Canada should 
then be in the hands of an able governor who understands 

i Page 8. 



64 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

his business, he will have a thousand opportunities of hasten- 
ing the event ; this is the only advantage we can reap of all 
it has cost us." 1 

In the third letter, addressed to M. Mole, First Presi- 
dent of the Parliament of Paris, and dated at the camp 
before Quebec, 24th August, 1759, on the eve of the 
fatal battle in which both commanders fell, Montcalm 
mounts the tripod : — 

" They are in a condition to give us battle, which I must 

not refuse, and which I cannot hope to gain The event 

must decide. But of one thing be certain, that I probably 
shall not survive the loss of the colony. 2 .... I shall at 
least console myself in my defeat and on the loss of the 
colony, by the full persuasion that this defeat will one day 
serve my country more than a victory, and that the con- 
queror, in aggrandizing himself, will find his tomb in the 
country he gains from us. 3 .... All the English colo- 
nies would long since have shaken off the yoke, each prov- 
ince would have formed itself into a little independent 
republic, if the fear of seeing the French at their door had 
not been a check upon them. 4 .... Canada, once taken 
by the English, would in a few years suffer much more from 

being forced to be English They would soon be of 

no use to England, and perhaps they would oppose her." 5 

At once on their appearance these letters played an 
important part in the " high life " of politics. The 
"Monthly Review" 6 called them "genuine." The 
"Gentleman's Magazine" 7 Said that "the sagacity of 
this accomplished general was equal to his bravery," 
and quoted what it characterized as a "remarkable pre- 
diction." In the House of Lords, 30th May, 1777, dur- 

1 Page 18. 3 Page 22. 6 p as r e 27. 1 July, 1777, p. 342. 

2 Page 21. 4 p :X g e 2 4. 6 April, 1777, p. 306. 



MARQUIS DE MONTCALM, 1759. 65 

ing a debate begun by Lord Chatham, and flashing with 
great names, Lord Shelburne said that " they had been 
discovered to be a forgery"; 1 but Lord Mansfield, the 
illustrious Chief Justice, relied upon the letters, " which 
he insisted were not spurious." 2 In another important 
debate in the House of Lords, 5th March, 1778, Earl 
Temple, after quoting Montcalm, " observed that the au- 
thenticity of these letters had been often disputed ; but 
he could affirm that he saw them in manuscript among 
the papers of a minister now deceased, long before they 
made their appearance in print, and at a time when 
American independence was in the contemplation of a 
very few persons indeed." 3 Such was the contempo- 
rary testimony ; but the pamphlet shared the fate of the 
numerous brood engendered by the war. 

Oblivion seemed to have settled on these letters, 
when their republication at Gibraltar, as late as 1858, 
by an author who treated them as genuine, 4 attracted 
the attention of Thomas Carlyle, who proceeded to 
make them famous again, by introducing them as an 
episode in his Life of Frederick, sometimes called the 
Great. Montcalm appears once more as prophet, and 
the readers of the career of the Prussian monarch turn 
with wonder to the inspired Frenchman, with "his 
power of faithful observation, his sagacity and talent of 
prophecy so considerable." 5 Then, quoting a consider- 
able portion of the last letter, the great author exclaims 
at different points : " Prediction first " ; " This is a curi- 

1 Parliamentary History, Vol. IX. p. 346. 

2 Ibid., p. 351. 

3 Ibid., p. 847. 

4 The Plains of Abraham, Notes original and selected, by Lieutenant- 
Colonel Reathon. 

5 History of Frederick II. of Prussia, Vol. V. p. 557 (London, 1865). 



66 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

ously exact prediction " ; " Prediction second, which is 
still more curious." 1 

If the letter quoted by Carlyle were genuine, as he 
accepted it (also as was evidently accepted by Lord 
John Eussell 2 ), and as the family of Montcalm seem to 
believe, it would indicate for the soldier all that was 
claimed by his descendant when, after speaking of his 
"political foresight," he added that it "was proved by one 
of his letters, in which he made a remarkable prophecy 
concerning the American Revolution." 3 Certainly, — 
if the letter is not an invention ; but such is the present 
impression. On the title-page of the original pamphlet, 
in the Library of Harvard University, Sparks, whose 
judgment is of great weight, has written: "These let- 
ters are unquestionably spurious." Others unite with 
him. It is impossible to read the paper in the " Pro- 
ceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society," al- 
ready quoted, and the pungent note of George Stevens, 
in his catalogue entitled Bibliotlicca Historica, under 
the title of the much debated pamphlet, without feel- 
ing that whatever may have been the merits of Mont- 
calm as a soldier, his title as a prophet cannot be ac- 
cepted. His name is introduced here that I may not 
omit an instance which has attracted attention in more 
than one generation. 

THE DUKE DE CHOISEUL, 1767, 1768. 

Another Frenchman in this far-sighted list was 
the Count de Stainville, afterwards Duke de Choiseul, 

1 History of Frederick II. of Prussia, Vol. V. p. 558. 

2 House of Commons, 8th February, 1850. Hanford, Parliamentary De- 
bates, Third Series, Vol. CVIII. p. 537. 

3 Remarks of Mr. Parkman. Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical 
Society, 1869-70, p. 113. 



THE DUKE DE CHOISEUL, 1767. 67 

born 28th June, 1719, and died May, 1785. His 
brilliant career as diplomatist and statesman was pre- 
ceded by a career of arms with rapid promotion, so 
that at the age of forty he became lieutenant-general. 
Meanwhile he was ambassador at Rome and then at 
Vienna, being the two pinnacles of diplomatic life. 
In 1758 he became Minister of Foreign Affairs, also 
duke and peer; then Minister of War; but in 1766 
he resumed the Foreign Office, which he held till 1770, 
when he was disgraced. The king could not pardon 
the contempt with which, although happy in the smiles 
of Madame de Pompadour, the Prime Minister rejected 
the advances of her successor, the ignoble Du Barry ; 
and he was exiled from court to live in his chateau 
on the Loire, where, dispensing a magnificent hospi- 
tality, he was consoled by a loving wife and devoted 
friends. 

He had charm of manner rather than person, with 
a genius for statesmanship recognized and commemo- 
rated in contemporary writings. Madame du Deffant 
speaks of him often in her correspondence, and depicts 
him in her circle when Franklin was first presented 
there. Horace Walpole returns to him in letters and 
in his memoirs, attributing to him -"great parts," 1 
calling him "daring and dashing, whose good-nature 
would not have checked his ambition from doing any 
splendid mischief." The Abbe Barthelemy, in his 
"Travels of Anacharsis," portrays him under the 
character of Arsane. Frederick of Prussia, so often 
called the Great, hailed him "coachman of Europe." 
And our own historian Bancroft does not hesitate to 

1 Letter to Countess of Ossory, 8th November, 1789. Letters by Cunning- 
ham, Vol. I. p. 234. 



68 PEOPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

call him "the greatest minister of France since Riche- 
lieu." 

The two volumes of memoirs purporting to be written 
by himself and printed under his eyes in his cabinet 
in 1778, were accidental pieces, written, but never col- 
lected by him, nor intended as memoirs. 1 In the 
French treasure-house of these productions they are 
of little value, if not unworthy of his fame. 

Besides a brilliant and famous administration of 
affairs, are several acts not to be forgotten. At Rome 
his skill was shown in bringing Benedict XIV. to a com- 
mon understanding on the bull Unigenitus. Through 
him in 1764 the Jesuits were suppressed in France, 
or were permitted only on condition of mingling with 
the secular clergy. But nothing in his career was more 
memorable than his foresight and courage witli regard 
to the English colonies. American Independence was > 
foreseen and helped by him. 

The memoirs of Choiseul have little of the elevation 
recognized in his statesmanship, nor are they anywhere 
prophetic. Elsewhere his better genius was manifest, 
especially in his diplomacy. This was recognized by 
Talleyrand, who, in a paper on the advantages of new 
colonies, read before the Institute towards the close 
of the last century, characterized him as "one of the 
men of our age who had the most of foresight in his 
intelligence, who already in 1769 foresaw the separation 
of America from England, and dreaded the partition 
of Poland"; 2 and he adds that "from this epoch he 

1 M^moires de M. le Due de Choiseul Merits par lui-meme et imprime's 
sous ses yeux dans son cabinet a Chanteloup en 1778. 2 livres, Chanteloup 
et Pari?, 1790. 

2 H«sai sur les avantages a retirer des colonies dans les circonstances 
presentes, par le citoyen Talleyrand, lu a lTnstitut National, 25 Messidor, 



THE DUKE DE CHOISEUL, 1768. 69 

sought by negotiations to prepare the cession of Egypt 
to Fiance, that on the day the American colonies 
should escape, he might be ready with a substitute in 
the same productions and a more extended commerce." 

Bancroft, whose work shows unprecedented access 
to original documents, recognizes the prevision of the 
French minister at an earlier date, as attested by the 
archives of the French Foreign Office. In 1764 he 
received the report of a special agent who had visited 
America. In 17G7 he sent Baron de Kalb, afterwards 
an officer in our Revolution, — sparing no means to 
obtain information, and drawing even from New Eng- 
land sermons, of which curious extracts are preserved 
among the State Papers of France. In August of this 
year, writing to his plenipotentiary at London, the 
Minister says with regard to England and her colonies : 
" Let her but attempt to establish taxes in them, and 
those countries, greater than England in extent and 
perhaps becoming more populous, having fisheries, for- 
ests, shipping, corn, iron, and the like, will easily and 
fearlessly separate themselves from the mother coun- 
try." l In the next year Du Chatelet, son of her who 
was the companion of Voltaire and the French trans- 
lator of Newton, becomes his most sympathetic repre- 
sentative. To him the Minister wrote 15th July, 1768: 
" According to the prognostications of sensible men, who 
have had an opportunity to study the character of the 
Americans and to measure their progress from day to 
day in the spirit of independence, this separation of 
the American Colonies from the metropolis sooner or 

an V. See Historical Characters by Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer, Vol. I. p. 461, 
Appendix 
1 Bancroft, History of the United States, Vol. VI. pp. 95, 96. 



70 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

later must come. 1 .... I see all these difficulties, 
and do not dissemble their extent ; but I see also the 
controlling interest of the Americans to protit by the 
opportunity of a rupture to establish their indepen- 
dence." 2 Again he wrote, 22d November, 1768: 
" The Americans will not lose out of their view their 
rights and their privileges, and next to fanaticism for 
religion, the fanaticism for liberty is the most daring 
in its measures and the most dangerous in its con- 
secpiences." That the plenipotentiary was not less 
prompt in forecast appears in a letter of 9th November, 
1708 : " Without exaggerating the projects or the union 
of the Colonies the time of their independence is very 
near Three years ago the separation of the Eng- 
lish Colonies was looked upon as an object of attention 
for the next generation ; the germs were observed, but 
no one could foresee that they would be so speedily 
developed. This new order of things, this event which 
will necessarily have the greatest influence on the 
whole political system of Europe, will probably be 
brought about within a very few years." 3 The Min- 
ister replied, 20th December, 1768: "Your views are 
as subtle as they are comprehensive and well consid- 
ered. The king is perfectly aware of their sagacity 
and solidity, and I will communicate them to the 
Court of Madrid." 4 

These passages show a persistency of view, which be- 
came the foundation of French policy, so that the Duke 
was not merely a prophet but a practical statesman, 
guided by remarkable foresight. He lived long enough 
to witness the National Independence he had foretold, 

i Bancroft, History of the United States, Vol. VI. p. 169. 

2 Ibid., p. 170. 3 ibid., p. 244. 4 Ibid., p. 245. 



ABBE" KAYNAL, 1770. 71 

and to meet Franklin at Paris, while saved from wit- 
nessing the overthrow of the monarchy he had served 
and the bloody harvest of the executioner, where a 
beloved sister was among the victims. 



ABBE RAYNAL, 1770. 

Guillaume Thomas Eaynal, of France, was born 
11th March, 1711, and died 6th March, 179G, thus 
spanning, with his long life, from the failing years of 
Louis XIV. to the Reign of Terror, and embracing the 
prolonged period of intellectual activity which prepared 
the Revolution. Among contemporary " philosophers " 
his place was considerable. But he was a philosopher, 
with a cross of the adventurer and charlatan. 

Beginning as Jesuit and as priest, he somewhat tar- 
dily escaped the constraints of the latter to employ the 
education of the former in literary enterprise. A long- 
list of acknowledged works attests the activity of his 
pen, while others were attributed to him. With these 
avocations, yielding money, mingled jobbing and specula- 
tion, where even the slave-trade, afterwards furiously con- 
demned, became a minister of fortune. In the bright 
and audacious circles of Paris, especially with Diderot 
and D'Holbach, he found society. The remarkable fame 
which he reached during life has ceased, and his volu- 
minous writings slumber in oblivion, except, perhaps, a 
single one, which for a while played a great part and, 
by its prophetic spirit, vindicates a place in our Ameri- 
can gallery. 

Only the superficial character of this work appears in 
its title, — " Philosophical and Political History of the 
Establishments and of the Commerce of Europeans in 



72 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

the two Indies," 1 being in four volumes. It was a frame 
for pictures and declamations where freedom of thought 
was practically illustrated. Therefore it was published 
without the name of the author and at Amsterdam. This 
was as early as 1770. Edition followed edition. The 
Biographic Universdlc reports no less than twenty regu- 
lar and more than fifty pirated. At least four editions 
of an English translation saw the light. It was trans- 
lated, abridged, and reprinted in nearly all the languages 
of Europe. The subject was interesting at the time, 
but the peculiar treatment and the open assault upon 
existing order gave the work zest and popularity. 
Though often vicious in style, it was above the author in 
force and character, so that it was easy to believe that 
important parts were contributed by others. Diderot, 
who passed his life in helping others, is said to have 
supplied nearly a third of the whole. The work at last 
drew down untimely vengeance. Inspired by its signal 
success, the author, in 1780, after the lapse of a decade, 
put forth an enlarged edition, with frontispiece and 
portrait, the whole reenforced with insertions and addi- 
tions, where Christianity and even the existence of a 
God were treated with the license already applied to 
other things. The Parliament of Paris, by a decree 
dated May 21, 1781, handed the work to the public 
executioner to be burned, and condemned the author 
in person and goods Several years of exile followed. 

The Revolution in France found the Abbe Eaynal 
mellowed by time, and with his sustaining philosophers 
all dead. Declining active participation in the great 
conflict, he reappeared at last, so far as to address the 

1 Ilistoire Philosophiqne et Politique des Etablissemens et du Commerce 
des Europeans dans les deux Indes. 



abb£ EAYNAL, 1770. 73 

President of the National Assembly a letter where he 
pleaded for moderation and an active government. The 
ancient assailant of kings now called for " the tutelary 
protection of the royal authority." The early cant was 
exchanged for recant. 

The concluding book of the last edition of his 
famous work contains a chapter entitled " Has the Dis- 
covery of America been hurtful or useful to the Hu- 
man Eace ? " And this same question he presented as 
the subject for a prize of twelve hundred francs to be 
awarded by the Academy of Lyons. Such a question 
reveals a strange confusion, inconsistent with all our 
prophetic voices, but to be pardoned at a time when 
the course of civilization was so little understood, and 
Buffon had announced, as the conclusion of science, that 
the animal creation degenerated on the American Con- 
tinent. In his admirable answer to the great naturalist, 
Jefferson repels with spirit the allegation of the Abbe 
Eaynal that "America has not yet produced one good 
poet, one skilful mathematician, one man of genius in 
a single art or science." l But he does not seem aware 
that the author in his edition of 1780 had already beat- 
en a retreat from his original position. 12 This is more 
noteworthy as the edition appeared before the criticism. 

It was after portraying the actual condition of the 
English Colonies in colors which aroused the pro- 
test of Jefferson that the French philosopher surren- 
dered to a vision of the future. In reply to doubts 
he invokes time, education, civilization, and breaks 
forth : — 

"Perhaps then it will be seen that America is favorable to 

1 Notes on Virginia, Query VI. Complete Works, Vol. VIII. p. 312. 

2 Liv. XVIII. chap. 32.' 

4 



74 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

genius, to the creative arts of peace and of society. A new 
Olympus, an Arcadia, an Athens, a new Greece, will produce 
on the Continent, or in the archipelago which surrounds it, 
Homers, Theocrituses, and especially Anacreons. Perhaps 
another Newton will rise in the new Britain. It is from 
English America, do not doubt, that will shoot forth the 
first ray of the sciences, if they are to appear at last under a 
sky so long clouded. By singular contrast with the ancient 
world, where the arts passed from the South towards the 
North, in the new we shall witness the North enlighten the 
South. Let the English clear the land, j)urify the air, change 
the climate, meliorate nature ; a new universe will proceed 
from their hands for the glory and happiness of humanity." 1 

Then, speculating on the dissensions prevailing be- 
tween the Colonies and the mother country, he announces 
separation, but without advantage to the European rivals 
of England : — 

" Break the knot which binds ancient Britain to the new ; 
soon the northern colonies alone will have moi'e power than 
they possessed in union with the mother country. This 
great continent enfranchised from all compact with Europe will 

be free in all its movements The colonies of our 

absolute monarchies, following the example of the English 
colonies, will themselves break the chain which binds them 
shamefully to Europe." 2 

The New "World opens before the prophet : — 

" So everything conspires to pi'oduce the great disruption, 
of which we are not permitted to foresee the precise time. 
Everything tends thither, — the progress of good in the new 
hemisphere and the progress of evil in the old. 

1 Tom. VI. p. 379. Liv. XVIII. (ed. 1772). 

2 Ibid., p. 426. 



ABBti RAYNAL, 1770. 75 

" Alas ! the prompt and rapid decline of our morals and 
our strength, the crimes of kings and the sufferings of the 
people, will render universal this fatal catastrophe which 
must detach one world from the other. The mine is prepar- 
ing beneath the foundations of our rocking empires 

While our people are weakening and succumbing to each 
other, population and agriculture are increasing in America. 
The arts transported by our care will quickly spring up 
there. This country, derived from nothing, burns to figure 
in turn upon the face of the globe and in the history of the 
world. posterity ! thou wilt be more happy, perhaps, than 
thy unfortunate and contemptible ancestors ! " 1 

The edition of 1780 exhibits his sympathies with the 
Colonies. In considering the policy of the house of 
Bourbon, he recognizes the grasp of the pending revolu- 
tion. " The United States," he says, " have shown openly 
the project of drawing to their confederation all North 
America" ; and he mentions especially the invitation to 
the people of Canada. While questioning the conduct 
of France and Spain, he adds : — 

" The new hemisphere must detach itself some day from the 
old. This great dismemberment is prepared in Europe by 
the fermentation and the shock of our opinions ; by the 
overthrow of our rights, which created our courage ; by the 
luxury of our courts and the wretchedness of our fields; by 
the hate, enduring forever, between the cowards who possess 
all and the robust, even the virtuous, who have nothing more 
to lose than life. It is prepared in America by the growth 
of population, of agriculture, of industry, and of intelligence. 
All moves to that scission." 2 

In a sketch which follows are pictured the resources 

1 Tom. VI. pp. 427, 428. 

2 Liv. XVIII. chap. 52. 



76 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

of the " thirteen confederate provinces " and their future 
development. While confessing that the name of liberty 
is sweet ; that it is the cause of the entire human race ; 
that revolutions in its name are a lesson to despots ; that 
the spirit of justice, which rewards past evils by future 
happiness, is pleased to believe that this part of the New 
World cannot fail to become one of the most flourishing 
countries of the globe ; and that some go so far as to 
fear that Europe may some day find its masters in its 
children, 1 he proceeds to facts which may mitigate 
anxiety. 

The prophetic words of Raynal differ from others 
already quoted. Instead of letters or papers, buried in 
secrecy or disclosed to a few only, they were open proc- 
lamations circulated throughout Europe, and their influ- 
ence began as early as 1770. A prompt translation 
made them known in England. In 1777 they were 
quoted by an English writer pleading for us. 2 Among 
influences cooperating with the justice of our cause, 
they were of constant activity, until at last France, 
Spain, and Holland openly united with us. 

JONATHAN SHIPLEY, BISHOP OF ST. ASAPH, 1773. 

Not without heartfelt emotion do I write this name, 
never to be mentioned by an American without a senti- 
ment of gratitude and love. Such goodness and ability, 
dedicated so firmly to our cause, make Shipley conspic- 
uous among his contemporaries. In beauty of character 
and in prophetic spirit he resembles Berkeley. And yet 

1 Liv. XVI II. chap. 52. 

2 Dr. Price, in his second tract, " Additional Observations on the Nature 
and Value of Civil Liberty and the War with America," p. 49, note. 



JONATHAN SHIPLEY, 1773. 77 

biographical dictionaries forget to mention him, and in 
our country he is known chiefly through the friendship 
of Franklin. He was born about 1714, and died 9th 
December, 1788. 

His actual preferments in the Church attest a certain 
success, arrested at last by his sympathy for us. At 
an early day John Adams spoke of him as " the best 
bishop that adorns the bench." 1 And we learn from 
Wraxall, that it was through the hostility of the king- 
that during the short-lived Coalition Ministry Fox was 
prevented from making him Archbishop of Canterbury. 2 
But his public life was better than any prelacy. It is 
impossible to read his writings without discovering the 
stamp of superiority, where accuracy and clearness go 
hand in hand with courage and truth. 

The relations of Franklin with the good bishop are a 
beautiful episode in our revolutionary history. Two 
men, one English and the other American, venera- 
ble with years, mingled in friendship warm as that of 
youth, but steady to the grave, joining identity of sen- 
timent on important public questions with personal 
affection. While Franklin remained in England, as 
colonial representative, watching the currents, he was 
a frequent guest at the Englishman's country home, 
and there he entered upon his incomparable autobiog- 
raphy, leaving behind such pleasant memories that af- 
terwards the family never walked in the garden " with- 
out seeing Dr. Franklin's room and thinking of the work 
that was begun in it." 3 One of the daughters, in a 

1 Works, Vol. IV. p. 37. Novanglus, or a History of the Dispute with 
America, written in 1774. 

2 Historical Memoirs of his own Time, Vol. III. p. 347 (ed. 1836). 

a Franklin's Works by Sparks, Vol. VIII. p. 220. Letter of Miss Catha- 
rine Louisa Shipley, 2d August, 1785. 



78 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

touching letter to the latter, then at his own home in 
Philadelphia, informed him of her father's death, who, 
in reply to his " dear young friend," expressed his sense 
of the loss, " not to his family and friends only, but to 
his nation and the world," and then, after mentioning 
that he was in his eighty-fourth year and considerably 
enfeebled, added, " You will then, my clear friend, con- 
sider this as probably the last line to be received from 
me and as a taking leave." 1 

This brief story prepares the way for the two produc- 
tions illustrating his service to us. The first has the 
following title : " A Sermon preached before the Incor- 
porated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in 
Foreign Parts, at their Anniversary Meeting in the Par- 
ish of St. Mary-le-Bow, on Friday, February 19, 1773." 
Of this discourse several editions appeared in London, 
New York, and Boston. 2 Lord Chatham, after confess- 
ing himself " charmed and edified " by it, wrote : " This 
noble discourse speaks the preacher not only fit to bear 
rule in the state ; indeed, it does honor to the right- 
reverend bench." 3 Franklin, coupling it with his other 
productions relating to America, wrote : " Had his coun- 
sels in those pieces been attended to by the Ministers, 
how much bloodshed might have been prevented, and 
how much expense and disgrace to the nation avoided." 4 

1 Franklin's Works by Sparks, Vol. X. p. 391. Letter to Miss Catharine 
Louisa Shipley, 27th April, 1789. 

2 One of London and another of New York are in the Congressional Li- 
brary. The New York copy has the pencil lines of Mr. Webster, marking 
what he calls "remarkable passages" used by him in his "Address at the 
Laying of the Corner-stone of the Addition to the Capitol, 4th July, 1851." 
Works, Vol. II. p. 597. 

a Correspondence of Earl of Chatham, Vol. IV. p. 302. Letter to Earl 
of Shelbnrne. October 24, 1773. 
4 Works by Sparks, Vol. X. p 391. 



JONATHAN SHIPLEY, 1773. 79 

This discourse was from the text, " Glory be to God 
in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will towards 
men." J After announcing that " perhaps the annals of 
history have never afforded a more grateful spectacle to 
a benevolent and philosophic mind than the growth 
and progress of the British Colonies in North America," 
the preacher becomes prophet, and here his words are 
memorable : — 

" The colonies of North America have not only taken root 
and acquired strength, but seem hastening with an accel- 
erated progress to such a powerful state as may introduce a 
new and important change in human affairs." 2 

Then picturing the Colonies as receiving " by inher- 
itance all the improvements and discoveries Gf their 
mother country," — commencing " their flourishing 
state, at a time when the human understanding has at- 
tained to the free use of its powers, and has learned to 
act with vigor and certainty," and being in such a situ- 
ation that " they may avail themselves, not only of the 
experience and industry, but even of the .errors and mis- 
takes, of former days," the prophet proceeds : — 

" The vast continent itself, over which they are gradually 
spreading, may be considered a treasure yet untouched of 
natural productions, that hereafter shall afford ample matter 
for commerce and contemplation. And if we reflect what a 
stock of knowledge may be accumulated by the constant 
progress of industrj^ and observation, . ... it is difficult 
even to imagine to what height of improvement their discoveries 
may extend. ." 3 

The prophet opens another vista : " And perhaps 
they may make as considerable advances in the arts of 

l Luke ii. 14. 2 p age 5. 8 p age V. 



80 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

civil government and the conduct of life." Then, exhib- 
iting the excellences of the British Constitution with 
its " equal representation," which he calls " the best dis- 
covery of political wisdom," and inquiring anxiously if 
they " must rest here, as in the utmost effort of human 
genius," the preacher becomes again prophetic : — 

" May they not possibly be more successful than their 
mother country has been in preserving that reverence and 
authority which are due to the laws, — to those who make 
and to those who execute them 1 May not a method be in- 
vented of procuring some tolerable share of the comforts 
of life to those inferior, useful ranks of men, to whose indus- 
try we are indebted for the whole 1 ? Time and discipline may 
discover some means to correct the extreme inequalities of condi- 
tion, between the rich and the poor, so dangerous to the inno- 
cence and happiness of both." a 

Beautiful words ! And in the same spirit the prophet 
discerns increasing opportunities of progress : — 

" The diversities of new scenes and situations, which so 
many growing States must necessarily pass through, may 
introduce changes in the fluctuating opinions and manners of 
men which we can form no conception of And not only the 
gracious disposition of Providence, but the visible prepara- 
tion of causes, seems to indicate strong tendencies towards a 
general improvement." 2 

To a spirit so elevated the obligations of duty are the 
same for nations as for individuals, and he nobly vindi- 
cates the duty of the Christian preacher " to point out 
the laws of justice and equity which must ultimately 
regulate the happiness of States as well as of individu- 
als," 3 and which he declares are no other than "those 

i Page 8. 2 Page 9. 8 Page 13. 



JONATHAN SHIPLEY, 17/3. 81 

benevolent Christian morals which it is the province 
of this Society to teach, transferred from the duties of 
private life to the administration of public affairs." 1 
Then again he declares amazement, in which all but 
hardened politicians will unite, at seeing " how slowly 
in all countries the principles of natural justice, which 
are so evidently necessary in private life, have been ad- 
mitted into the administration of public affairs." And, 
in the same spirit, he announces : — 

" A time, I doubt not, will come, in the progressive im- 
provement of human affairs, when the checks and restraints 
we lay on the industry of our fellow-subjects and the jeal- 
ousies we conceive at their prosperity will be considered as 
the effects of a mistaken policy, prejudicial to all parties, 
but chiefly to ourselves." 2 

Then, after announcing our duty " to make our country 
great and powerful and rich, not by force or fraud, but 
by justice, friendship, and humanity," this remarkable 
sermon concludes with calling attention to " plain good 
rules so often repeated to us in Scripture, "which " lie be- 
fore the eyes of men, like medicinal herbs in the open 
field." 

In the course of his remarks, the preacher lets drop 
words often quoted since and doubtless considered much 
in conversation with Franklin. After setting forth that 
the Colonies had been trusted, in good measure, with the 
entire management of their affairs,- he proceeds to say : 
" And the success they have met with ought to be to us 
a memorable proof that the true art of government con- 
sists in not governing too much," 3 

In similar spirit the good bishop came to the defence 

l Page 14. a Page 15. s p age io. 

4 * p 



82 PKOPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

of Massachusetts in the crisis which followed the nulli- 
fication of the Tea Tax ; as witness an able pamphlet, 
printed in 1774, entitled "A Speech intended to have 
been spoken on the Bill for altering the Charters of the 
Colonies of Massachusetts Bay." In this most vigorous 
production, reported by Franklin as " a masterpiece of 
eloquence," x where he pleads for reconciliation, after 
announcing that England had drawn from the Colonies, 
by commerce, " more clear profit than Spain has drawn 
from all its mines," 2 he says : " Let them continue to 
enjoy the liberty our fathers gave them ! Gave them, did 
I say ? They are coheirs of liberty with ourselves ; and 
their portion of the inheritance has been much better 
looked after than ours." 3 Then again : " My Lords, I 
look upon North America as the only great nursery of 
freemen now left upon the face of earth." 4 And yet 
once more : " But whatever may be our future fate, the 
greatest glory that attends this country, a greater than 
any other nation ever acquired, is to have formed and 
nursed up to such a state of happiness those colonies 
whom we are now so eager to butcher." 5 Thanks, per- 
petual thanks, to the good friend who stood so well by 
our country in its beginning and discerned so clearly its 
exalted future. 

DEAN TUCKER, 1774. 

In contrast with Shipley w T as his contemporary, Jo- 
siah Tucker, also of the Church, who was born 1712 and 
died 4th November, 1799. . 

The contrast is more curious when it is considered 
that Tucker, like Shipley, was for the peaceful separa- 

i Letter to Mr. Coombe, July 22, 1774. Works, Vol. VIII. p. 124. 
2 Page 15. 3 p a <re 27. 4 Page 31. 6 p a ge 32. 



DEAN TUCKER, 1774. 83 

tion of the Colonies from the mother country ; but the 
former was biting and cynical, while the latter was 
sympathetic and kind. The former sent forth a succes- 
sion of criticisms as from the tub of Diogenes, while the 
latter, with genial power, vindicated America and pre- 
dicted its future. The former was a carping censor and 
enemy of Franklin ; the latter, his loving friend. 

Tucker was rector of Bristol and dean of Gloucester, 
and he announces that he had " written near three hun- 
dred sermons and preached them all again and again " ; 
but it was by political essays that he made Ins name 
known and became a conspicuous gladiator. 

Here it is easy to recognize industry, facility, bold- 
ness. He was not afraid to speak out, nor did he shrink 
from coping with those who commanded the public at- 
tention, — joining issue directly with Burke " in answer 
to his printed speech, said to be spoken in the House of 
Commons on the 22d of March, 1775," being that fa- 
mous masterpiece, on "conciliation with America," so 
much read, so often quoted, and so highly placed among 
the efforts of human genius. The Dean used plain lan- 
guage, charging the great orator with excelling " in the 
art of ambiguous expressions," and at all times having 
one general end in view, " to amuse with tropes and fig- 
ures and great swelling words," and hoping that while 
emulating the freedom of Burke in examining the writ- 
ings and opinions of others, he should do it "with more 
decency and good manners." More than once the Dean 
complains that the orator had classed him by name 
with what he called " court vermine." 

As early as 17G6, in the heats of the Stamp Act, he 
entered the lists by an unamiable pamphlet, entitled 
" A Letter from a Merchant in London to his Nephew 



84 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

in North America, relative to the present Posture of 
Affairs in the Colonies." Here appears the vigorous 
cynicism of his nature. The mother country is vindi- 
cated, and the Colonies are told that " the complaint of 
being unrepresented is entirely false and groundless," 
inasmuch as every member of Parliament, when once 
chosen, becomes " the equal guardian of all," and " our 
Birminghams, Manchesters, Leeds, Halifaxes, and your 
Bostons, New Yorks, and Philadelphias are as really, 
though not so nominally, represented as any part what- 
ever of the British Empire." 1 In the same spirit he 
ridiculed the pretensions of colonists, putting into their 
mouths the words " What ! an island ! A spot such as 
this to command the great and mighty continent of North 
America ! Preposterous ! A continent whose inhabitants 
double every five-and-twenty years ! Who, therefore, 
within a century and a half, will be upwards of a hundred 
and seventy millions of souls ! Forbid it, patriotism, for- 
bid it, politics, that such a great and mighty empire as 
this should be held in subjection by the paltry kingdom 
of' Great Britain ! Rather let the seat of empire be trans- 
ferred ; and let it be fixed where it ought to be, namely, in 
great America" ; 2 and then declaring " the calculations 
themselves both false and absurd," 3 taunting the colo- 
nists with inability to make the mother country " a 
province of America," 3 and depicting the evils that 
will ensue to them from separation, he announces that, 
" having been surfeited with the bitter fruits of Ameri- 
can republicanism, they will heartily wish and petition 
to be again united to the mother country." 4 

1 A Letter from a Merchant in London to his Nephew in North America, 
etc, pp. 19, 20. 

2 Ibid., p. 42. 3 Ibid., p. 43. 4 Ibid., p. 54. 



DEAN TUCKER, 1774. 85 

As the conflict approached, the Dean became more 
earnest and incessant. In 1774 he published a book, 
entitled " Four Tracts on Political and Commercial Sub- 
jects," of which the third was a reprint of the " Letter 
from a Merchant of London," and the fourth was a new 
appeal, entitled " The true Interest of Great Britain set 
forth in regard to the Colonies, and the only Means of 
living in Peace and Harmony with them [including five 
different plans for effecting this salutary measure]. " * 
Here he openly proposed separation, and predicted its 
advantage to England. On general grounds he was per- 
suaded that extensive colonies were an evil rather than 
an advantage, especially to a commercial nation, while 
he was satisfied of a present alienation on the part of 
America, which it would be unprofitable, if not perilous, 
to combat. England was in no mood for such truth, 
and the author was set down as madman or quack. 
Evidently he w T as a prophet. 

A few passages will show the character of this re- 
markable production. 

" It is the nature of them all [colonies] to aspire after in- 
dependence, and to set up for themselves as soon as ever 
they find that they are able to subsist without being be- 
holden to the mother country." 2 

True enough, and often saftl by others. In dealing 
with the different plans the Dean shows originality. 
To the idea of compulsion by arms he exclaimed : " But 
alas ! victory alone is but a poor compensation for all 
the blood and treasure which must be spilt." 3 The 

1 This Fourth Tract was published separately in Philadelphia, in 1774, 
with the above title. 

2 Four Tracts, p. 161. 

3 Ibid., p. 196. 



86 PHOPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

plan numbered Fourth was nothing less than that 
America should become the general seat of empire, and 
that Great Britain and Ireland should be governed by 
viceroys " from the court residences either at Philadel- 
phia or New York or some other American imperial 
city," to which the indefatigable Dean replies : — 

" Now, wild as such a scheme may appear, there are cer- 
tainly some Americans who seriously embrace it ; and the 
late prodigious swarms of emigrants encourage them to sup- 
pose that a time is approaching when the seat of empire 
must be changed. But whatever events may be in the 
womb of time, or whatever revolutions may happen in the 
rise and fall of empires, there is not the least probability 
that this country should ever become a province to North 
America Unless, indeed, we should add one extrava- 
gance to another, by supposing that the Americans are to 
conquer all the world, and in that case I do allow that Eng- 
land must become a province to America. " * 

Then comes the Fifth Plan, which was " to separate 
entirely from the North American Colonies by declaring 
them to be a free and independent people, over whom 
we lay no claim, and then by offering to guarantee this 
freedom and independence against all foreign invaders 
whatever." 2 And he proceeds to show that by such 
separation the mother country would not lose the trade 
of the Colonies. His unamiable nature flares out in the 
suggestion that " the moment a separation takes effect, 
intestine quarrels will begin " ; 3 that "in proportion as 
their republican spirit shall intrigue and cabal, they will 
split into parties, divide and subdivide," while his con- 
fidence in the result is declared ; " and yet I have ob- 

i Four Tracts, p. 201. 2 ibid., p. 203. s Ibid., p. 219. 



DEAN TUCKER, 1774. 87 

served, and have myself had some experience, that 
measures evidently right will prevail at last " ; there- 
fore he had not the least doubt but that a separation 
would take place " within half a century." x Though 
seeing the separation so clearly, he did not see how near 
at hand it then was. 

The Dean grew more earnest. Other pamphlets fol- 
lowed ; for instance, in 1775, "An Humble Address 
and Earnest Appeal, whether a Connection with or a 
Separation from the Continental Colonies of America be 
most for the National Advantage and the lasting Bene- 
fit of these Kingdoms." Here he says openly : — 

" My scheme, which Mr. Burke is pleased to term a child- 
ish one, is to separate totally from the Colonies,, and to 
reject them from being fellow-members and joint-partakers 
with us in the privileges and advantages of the British Empire, 
because they refuse to submit to the authority and jurisdic- 
tion of the British legislature, — offering at the same time 
to enter into alliances of friendship and treaties of com- 
merce with them, as with any other sovereign, independent 
state." 2 

Then, insisting that his scheme " most infallibly cuts off 
all the present causes of dispute and contention be- 
tween the two countries, so that they never can revive 
again," 3 he establishes that commercial intercourse with 
the Americans would not cease, inasmuch as it cannot 
be shown that they " will no longer adhere to their own 
interest when they shall be disunited from us." 4 

Among subsequent tracts was one entitled " Cui Bo- 
no ? Or an Inquiry what Benefits can arrive either to 

1 Four Tracts, p. 221. 

2 Page 5. 3 p a g e 29. 4 p age 48. 



88 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

England or the Americans, the French, Spaniards, or 
Dutch, from the greatest Victories or Successes in the 
present War, being a Series of Letters addressed to 
Monsieur Necker, late Controller-General of the Finances 
of France. Printed at Glocester, 1782." Here was the 
same ardor for separation, with the same bitter words 
for the Colonies. 

Tardily the foresight of the Dean was recognized, 
until at last Archbishop Whately, in his annotation 
upon Bacon's Essay on Honor and Reputation com- 
memorates it as an historic example. According to him 
" the whole British nation were in one particular mani- 
festly ijuzzlc-hcadccl, except one man, who was accord- 
ingly derided by all." Then mentioning the dispute 
between the mother country and her colonies, he says : 
" But Dean Tucker, standing quite alone, wrote a pam- 
phlet to show that the separation would be no loss at 
all, and that we had best give them the independence 
they coveted at once and in a friendly way. Some 
thought he was writing in jest; the rest despised him 
as too absurd to be worth answering. But now, and 
for above half a century, every one admits that he was 
quite right, and regrets that his view was not adopted." 1 
Unquestionably this is a remarkable tribute. Kindred 
to it was that of the excellent Professor Smyth, who, in 
exhibiting the "American War," dwells on " the supe- 
rior and the memorable wisdom of Tucker." 2 

The bad temper shooting from his writings interfered, 
doubtless, with their acceptance. His spirit, so hostile" 
to us, justified his own characterization of himself as 
"the author of these tracts against the rebel Ameri- 

1 Bacon's Essays, by Whately, p. 486. 

2 futures on Modern History, Vol. II. p. 380, Lecture XXXII. 



DEAN TUCKEE, 1774. 89 

cans." As the war drew to a close, his bad temper still 
prevailed, heightened by antipathy to republicanism, so 
that, after picturing the Colonies, separated at last from 
the mother country, as having " gained a general disap- 
pointment mixed with anger and indignation," x he thus 
predicts their terrible destiny : — 

" As to the future grandeur of America and its being a 
rising empire under one Head, whether republican or mo- 
narchical, it is one of the idlest and most visionary no- 
tions that ever was conceived, even by writers of romance. 
For there is nothing in the genius of the people, the situa- 
tion of their country, or the nature of their different cli- 
mates, which tends to countenance such a supposition 

Above all, when those immense inland regions beyond the 
back settlements, which are still unexplored, are taken into 
the account, they form the highest probability that the 
Americans never can be united into one compact empire, 
under any species of government whatever. Their fate 
seems to be — a disunited people till the end of time." 2 

Alas ! But evidently the Dean saw the future of our 
continent no better than the Ministry saw their duty 
with regard to it. 

Unlike in spirit was Mathew Eobinson, a contempo- 
rary friend of America, whose able and elaborate tracts 3 
in successive editions are now forgotten except so far as 
revived by the praise of Professor Smyth. 4 His vindi- 

1 Cui Bono V p. 86. 

2 Ibid., pp. 117, 118. 

3 Considerations on the Measures carrying on with respect to the British 
Colonies in North America, 1774. A further Examination of our present 
American Measures and of the Reasons and Principles on which they are 
founded, 1776. 

4 Lectures on Modern History, Vol. II. p. 383, Lecture XXXII. 



90 PEOPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

cation of the Colonies, at the time of the Boston Port 
Bill, was complete, without the harshness of Tucker, 
and he did not hesitate to present the impossibility of 
conquering them. " What expectation or probability," 
he asks, " can there be of sending from hence armies 
capable to conquer and subdue so great a force of men 
defending and defended by such a continent." J Then, 
while depicting English mastery of the sea, he says : 
" We may do whatever a fleet can. Very true ; but it 
cannot sail all over North America." 2 The productions of 
this enlightened author cannot have been without effect. 
Doubtless they helped the final acknowledgment of 
independence. When will the " Old Mortality " appear 
to discover and restore his monument ? 

The able annotator of Lord Bacon was too sweeping 
when he said that on the great American question all 
England was wrong "except one man." 3 Iiobinsonwas 
as right as the Dean, and there were others also. The 
" Monthly Review," in an article on the Dean's appeal 
for separation, said : " This, however, is not a new idea. 
It has frequently occurred to others." 4 Even Soames 
Jenyns, a life-long member of Parliament, essayist, poet, 
defender of Christianity, while upholding the right to 
tax the Colonies, is said to have accepted the idea of 
" total separation." 

" Let all who view th' Instructive scene, 
And patronize the plan, 
Give thanks to Gloucester's honest Dean, 
For, Tucker, thou 'rt the man." 5 

1 Considerations, p. 66. 

2 Ibid., p. 72. 

3 Bacon's Essays, by Whately, p. 486. 

4 February, 1774, Vol. I. p. 135. 

5 The American Coachman, Jenjms's Works, Vol. I. p. 205. The editor, 
not regarding this little poem as a jest, says of it : " The author, with that 



DEAN TUCKER, 1774. 91 

In a better spirit and with affecting earnestness, 
John Cartwright, once of the Boyal Navy and known 
as Major from his rank in the Nottinghamshire Militia, 
followed the Dean, in 1774, with a series of letters col- 
lected in a pamphlet entitled " American Independence, 
the Interest and Glory of Great Britain," where he insists 
upon separation, and thenceforward a friendly league, 
" that the true and lasting welfare of both countries can 
be promoted." In enforcing his conclusion the author 
says : " When we talk of asserting our sovereignty over 
the Americans, do we foresee to what fatal lengths it will 
carry us ? Are not those nations increasing with as- 
tonishing rapidity ? Must they not, in the nature of 
tilings, cover in a few ages that immense continent like 
a swarm of bees ? " * Then again : " We may, indeed, 
by means of fleets and armies, maintain a precarious 
tyranny over the Americans for a while ; but the most 
shallow politicians must foresee what this would end 
in." 2 Then in reply to the Dean : " 'T is a pity so 
able a writer had not discovered that the Americans 
have a right to choose their own governors, and thence 
enforce the necessity of his proposed separation as a 
religious duty, no less than a measure of national pol- 
icy." 3 Cartwright continued at borne the conflicts of 
principle involved in our war of independence, and be- 
came an English Beformer. Honor to his name ! 

conciseness as to the matter and humor in the manner so peculiar to him- 
self, recommends and supports the Dean's plan." 

1 Page 65, Letter VI., March 27, 1774. 

2 Ibid., p. 66. 

3 Ibid., p. 68. 



92 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 



DAVID HARTLEY, 1775, 1785. 

Another English friend was David Hartley. He 
was constant and even pertinacious on our side, al- 
though less prophetic than Pownall, with whom he 
cooperated in purpose and activity. His father was 
Hartley the metaphysician, and author of the ingenious 
theory of sensation, who predicted the fate of existing 
governments and hierarchies in two simple sentences : 
" It is probable that all the civil governments will be 
overturned " ; " it is probable that the present forms 
of church government will be dissolved." Many were 
alarmed. Lady Charlotte Wentworth asked the prophet 
when these terrible things would happen. The answer 
was : " I am an old man, and shall not live to see 
them ; but you are a young woman, and will probably 
see them." * 

The son was born in 1729, and died at Bath in 1813. 
During our Revolution he sat in Parliament for Kings- 
ton-upon-HulL He was also the British plenipoten- 
tiary in negotiating the definitive Treaty of Peace with 
the United States. He has dropped out of sight. 
The biographical dictionaries afford him a few lines 
only. But he deserves a considerable place in the his- 
tory of our independence. 

John Adams was often austere, and sometimes cyni- 
cal in his judgments. Evidently he did not like 
Hartley. In one place he speaks of him as " talkative 
and disputatious, and not always intelligible " ; 2 then, 
as " a person of consummate vanity " ; 3 and then, when 

1 D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature, Vol. III. p. 275. Predictions. 

2 Works, Vol. IX. p. 517. 
8 Ibid., Vol. III. p. 137. 



DAVID HARTLEY, 1775. 93 

appointed to sign the definitive Treaty, " it would have 
been more agreeable to have finished with Mr. Os- 
wald " ; 1 and, in still another place, " Mr. Hartley was 
as copious as usual." 2 And yet, when writing most 
elaborately to Count de Vergennes on the prospects of 
the negotiation with England, he introduces opinions of 
Hartley at length, saying that he was " more for peace 
than any man in the kingdom." 3 Such testimony may 
well outweigh the other expressions, especially as 
nothing of the kind appears in the correspondence of 
Franklin, with whom Hartley was much more intimate. 
The Parliamentary History is a sufficient monument 
for Hartley. He was a frequent speaker, and never 
missed an opportunity of pleading our cause. Although 
without the immortal eloquence of Burke, he was al- 
ways clear and full. Many of his speeches seem writ- 
ten out by himself. He was not a tardy convert, but 
began as " a new member " by supporting an amend- 
ment favorable to the Colonies, 5th December, 1774. 
Then, in March, 1775, he brought forward " propositions 
for conciliation with America," which he sustained in 
an elaborate speech, where lie avowed that the Amer- 
ican Question had occupied him for some time : — 

" Though I have so lately had the honor of a seat in this 
House, yet I have for many years turned my thoughts and 
attention to matters of public concern and national policy. 
This question of America is now of many years' standing." 4 

In this speech he acknowledges the services of New 
England at Louisburg : — 

1 Works, Vol. VII. p. 54. 

2 Ibid., Vol. III. p. 303. 

3 Ibid., Vol. VII. p 226. 

4 Parliamentary History. Vol. XVIII. p. 553. 



94: PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

"In that war too, sir, they took Louisburg from the French, 
single-handed, without any European assistance, — as met- 
tled an enterprise as any in our history, — an everlasting 
memorial of the zeal, courage, and perseverance of the troops 
of New England. The men themselves dragged the cannon 
over a morass which had always been thought impassable, 
where neither horses nor oxen could go, and they carried 
the shot upon their backs. And what was their reward for 
this forward and spirited enterprise, — for the reduction of 
this American Dunkirk 1 Their reward, sir, you know very 
well ; it was given up for a barrier to the Dutch." x 

All his various propositions were negatived ; but he 
was not disheartened. Constantly he spoke, — now on 
the budget, then on the address, and then on specific prop- 
ositions. At this time he asserted the power of Parlia- 
ment over the Colonies, and lie proposed, on the 2d 
November, 1775, that a test of submission by the Colo- 
nists should be the recognition of an act of Parliament 
" enacting that all the slaves in America should have the 
trial by jury." 2 Shortly afterwards, on the 5th Decem- 
ber, 1775, he brought forward a second set of "proposi- 
tions for conciliation with America," where, among other 
things, he embodied the test on slavey, which he put for- 
ward as a compromise ; and here his language belongs, 
not only to the history of our Revolution, but to the 
history of antislavery. While declaring that in his 
opinion Great Britain was "the aggressor in everything," 
he sought to bring the two countries together on a plat- 
form of human rights, which he thus explained : — 

" The act to be proposed to America, as an auspicious 
beginning to lay the first stone of universal liberty to mankind, 

1 Parliamentary History, Vol. XVIII. p. 556. 

2 Ibid., p. 846. 



DAVID HARTLEY, 1775. 95 

should be what no American could hesitate an instant to 
comply with, namely, that every slave in North America 
should be entitled to his trial by jury in all criminal cases. 
America cannot refuse to accept and enroll such an act as 
this, and thereby to reestablish peace and harmony with 
the parent State. Let us all be reunited in this, as a founda- 
tion to extirpate slavery from the face of the earth. Let those 
who seek justice and liberty for themselves give that justice and 
liberty to their fellow-creatures. With respect to putting a 
final period to slavery in North America, it should seem 
best that, when this country had led the way by the act 
for jury, each Colony, knowing their own peculiar circum- 
stances, should undertake the work in the most practicable 
way, and that they should endeavor to establish some sys- 
tem by which slavery should be in a certain term of years 
abolished. Let the only contention henceforward between 
Great Britain and America be, which shcdl exceed the other in 
zeal for establishing the fundamental rights of liberty for all 
mankind? 1 

How grand and beautiful, not to be read without 
gratitude ! The motion was rejected ; but among the 
twenty-three in its favor were Fox and Burke. During 
this same month the unwearied defender of our country 
came forward again, declaring that he could not be " an 
adviser or a well-wisher to any of the vindictive opera- 
tions against America, because the cause is unjust ; but 
at the same time he must be equally earnest to secure 
British interests from destruction," and he thus prophe- 
sies : — 

" The fate of America is cast. You may bruise its heel, 
but you cannot crush its head. It will revive again. The 
new world is before them. Liberty is theirs. They have pos- 

l Parliamentary History, Vol. XVIII. p. 1050. 



96 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

session of a free government, their birthright and inherit- 
ance, derived to them from their parent state, which the 
hand of violence cannot Avrest from them. If you will cast 
them off, my last wish is to them, May they go and pros- 
per ! " 

Again, on the 10th May, 1776, he vindicated anew 
his original proposition, and here again he testifies for 
peace and against slavery. 

" For the sake of peace, therefore, I did propose a test of 
compromise by an act of acceptance, on the part of the 
Colonists, of an act of Parliament which should lay the 
foundation for the extirpation of the horrid custom of slavery 
in the New World. My motion was simply an act of com- 
promise and reconciliation ; and, as far as it was a legisla- 
tive act, it was still to have been applied in correcting the 
laws of slavery in America, which I considered as repugnant 
to the laws of the realm of England and to the fundamen- 
tals of our constitution. Such a compromise would at the 
same time have saved the national honor." 1 

All gratitude to the hero who at this early day 
vowed himself to the abolition of slavery. Hartley is 
among the first of abolitionists, with hardly a predeces- 
sor except Granville Sharp, and in Parliament absolute- 
ly the first. Clarkson was at this time fifteen years old, 
Wilberforce sixteen. Only in 1787 Clarkson obtained 
the prize for the best Latin essay on the question, " Is 
it right to make men slaves against their will ? " It 
was not until 1791 that Wilberforce moved for leave to 
bring in a bill for the abolition of the slave-trade. It 
is no small honor for one man to have come forward in 

l Parliamentary History, Vol. XVIII. p. 1356. 



DAVID HARTLEY, 1775. 97 

Parliament as an avowed abolitionist, while at the same 
time a vindicator of our independence. 

Again, on the 15th May, 1777, Hartley pleaded for 
us : — 

" At sea, which has hitherto been our prerogative ele- 
ment, they rise against us at a stupendous rate ; and if we 
cannot return to our old mutual hospitalities towards each 
other, a very few years will show us a most formidable hos- 
tile marine, ready to join hands with any of- our enemies. 
.... I will venture to prophesy that the principles of a 
federal alliance are the only terms of peace that ever will 
and that ever ought to obtain between the two countries." 1 

On the 15th of June, immediately afterwards, the 
Parliamentary History reports briefly : — 

" Mr. Hartley went upon the cruelties of slavery, and 
urged the Board of Trade to take some means of mitigating 
it. He produced a pair of handcuffs, which he said was a 
manufacture they were now going to establish." 2 

Thus again the abolitionist reappeared in the vindi- 
cator of our independence. On the 22d June, 1779, he 
brought forward another formal motion " for reconcilia- 
tion with America," and, in the course of a well-consid- 
ered speech, denounced the ministers for "headstrong 
and inflexible obstinacy in prosecuting a cruel and 
destructive American war." 13 On the 3d December, 
1779, in what is called " a very long speech," he re- 
turned to his theme, inveighing against ministers for 
" the favorite, though wild, Quixotic, and impracticable 

1 Parliamentary History, Vol. XIX. pp. 259, 260. 

2 Ibid., p. 315. 

3 Ibid., p. 904. 

5 G 



98 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

measure of coercing America." 1 These are only in- 
stances. 

During this time he maintained relations with 
Franklin, as appears in the " Diplomatic Correspond- 
ence of the Eevolution," all of which attests a desire for 
peace. In 1778 he arrived at Paris on a confidential 
errand, especially to confer with Franklin. On this 
occasion John Adams met him and judged him severe- 
ly. In 1783 he was appointed a commissioner to sign 
the definitive Treaty of Peace. 

These things belong to history. Though perhaps 
not generally known, they are accessible. I have pre- 
sented them for their intrinsic value and prophetic 
character, but also as the introduction to an unpub- 
lished letter from Hartley, which I received some time 
ago from an English friend who has since been called 
away from important labors. The letter concerns emi- 
gration to our country and the payment of the national 
debt. 

The following indorsement explains its character : — 

" Note. This is a copy of the material portion of a long 
letter from D. Hartley, the British Commissioner in Paris, 
to Lord Sydenham, January, 1785. The original was sold 
by C. Robinson, of 21 Bond Street, London, on the Cth 
April, 1859, at a sale of Hartley's MSS. and papers chiefly 
relating to the United States of America. It was Hartley's 
copy, in his own hand. 

" The lot was No. 82 in the sale catalogue. It was 
bought by J. R. Smith, the London bookseller, for £2 6s. 
Od. 

" I had a copy made before the sale. 

" Joseph Parhes. 

" London, 18 July, '59." 

1 Parliamentary History, Vol. XIX. p. 1190. 



DAVID HARTLEY, 1785. 99 

The letter is as follows : — 

" My Lord, — In your Lordship's last letter to me, just 
before my leaving Paris, you are pleased to say that any 
information which I might have been able to collect of a 
nature to promote the mutual and reciprocal interests of 
Great Britain and the United States of America would be 

extremely acceptable to his Majesty's government 

Annexed to this letter I have the honor of transmitting to 
your Lordship some papers and documents which I have 
received from the American Ministers. One of them (No. 
5) is a Map of the Continent of North America, in which 
the land ceded to them by the late treaty of peace is divided, 
by parallels of latitude and longitude, into fourteen new 
States. 

" The whole project, in its full extent, would take many 
years in its execution, and therefore it must be far beyond 
the present race of men to say, ' This shall be so.' Never- 
theless, those who have the first care of this Neio World will 
probably give it such directions and inherent influences as may 
guide and control its course and revolutions for ages to come. 
But these plans, being beyond the reach of man to predesti- 
nate, are likewise beyond the reach of comment or specula- 
tion to say what may or may not be possible, or to predict 
what events may hereafter be produced by time, climates, 
soils, adjoining nations, or by the unwieldy magnitude of 
empire, and the future popidation of millions superadded to 
millions. The sources of the Mississippi may be unknown. 
The lines of longitude and latitude may be extended into 
unexplored regions, and the plan of this new creation may 
be sketched out by a presumptuous compass, if all its inter- 
mediate uses and functions were to be suspended until the 
final and precise accomplishment, without failure or devia- 
tion, of this unbounded plan. But this is not the case ; the 
immediate objects in view are limited and precise ; they are 



100 PKOPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

of prudent thought, and within the scope of human power 
to measure out and to execute. The principle indeed is in- 
definite, and will be left to the test of future ages to deter- 
mine its duration or extent. 

" I take the liberty to suggest thus much, lest we should 
be led away to suppose that the councils which have pro- 
duced these plans have had no wiser or more sedate views 
than merely the amusement of drawing meridians of ambi- 
tion and high thoughts. There appear to me to be two 
solid and rational objects in view : the first is, by the sale 
of lands nearly contiguous to the present States (receiving 
Congress paper in payment according to its scale of depreci- 
ation) to extinguish the present national debt, which I under- 
stand might be discharged for about twelve millions ster- 
ling 

" It is a new proposition to be offered to the numerous 
common rank of mankind in all the countries of the world, 
to say that there are in America fertile soils and temperate 
climates in which an acre of land may be purchased for a 
trifling consideration, which may be possessed in freedom, 
together with all the natural and civil rights of mankind. 
The Congress have already proclaimed this, and that no 
other qualification or name is necessary but to become 
settlers, without distinction of countries or persons. The 
European peasant, who toils for his scanty sustenance in 
penury, wretchedness, and servitude, will eagerly fly to this 
asylum for free and industrious labor. The tide of immi- 
gration may set strongly outward from Scotland, Ireland, 
and Canada to this new land of promise. 

" A very great proportion of men in all the countries of 
the world are without property, and generally are subject 
to governments of which they have no participation, and 
over whom they have no control. The Congress have now 
opened to all the world a sale of landed settlements where 
the liberty and property of each individual is to be con- 



DAVID HARTLEY, 1785. 101 

signed to his own custody and defence These are such 

propositions of free establishments as have never yet been 
offered to mankind, and cannot fail of producing great ef- 
fects in the future progress of things. The Congress have 
arranged their offers in the most inviting and artful terms, 
and lest individual peasants and laborers should not have 
the means of removing themselves, they throw out induce- 
ments to moneyed adventurers to purchase and to under- 
take the settlement by commission and agency, without 
personal residence, by stipulating that the lands of pro- 
prietors being absentees shall not be higher taxed than the 
lands of residents. This will quicken the sale <*f lands, 
which is their object. 

" For the explanation of these points, I beg leave to refer 
your Lordship to the documents annexed, Nos. 5 and G, 
namely, the Map and Resolutions of Congress, dated April, 
1784. Another circumstance would confirm that it is the 
intention of Congress to invite moneyed adventurers to make 
purchases and settlements, which is the precise and mathe- 
matical mode of dividing and marking out for sale the lands 
in each new proposed State. These new States are to be 
divided by parallel lines running north and south, and by 
other parallels running east and west. They are to be 
divided into hundreds of ten geographical miles square, 
and then again into lots of one square mile. The divisions 
are laid out as regularly as the squares upon a chessboard, 
and all to be formed into a Charter of Compact, 

" They may be purchased by purchasers at any distance, 
and the titles may be verified by registers of such or such 
numbers, north or south, east or west ; all this is explained 
by the document annexed, No. 7, viz. The Ordinance for 
ascertaining the mode of locating and disposing of lands in 
the Western Territory. This is their plan and means for 
paying off their national debt, and they seem very intent 
upon doing it. I should observe that their debt consists 



102 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

of two parts, namely, domestic and foreign. The sale of 
lands is to be appropriated to the former. 

" The domestic debt may perhaps be nine or ten millions, 
and the foreign debt two or three. For payment of the 
foreign debt it is proposed to lay a tax of five per cent 
upon all imports until discharged, which, I am informed, 
has already been agreed to by most of the States, and 
probably will soon be confirmed by the rest. Upon the 
whole, it appears that this plan is as prudently conceived 
and as judiciously arranged, as to the end proposed, as 
any experienced cabinet of European ministers could have 
devised»or planned any similar project. 

" The second point which appears to me to be deserving 
of attention, respecting the immense cession of territory to 
the United States at the late peace, is a point which will 
perhaps in a few years become an unparalleled phenomenon 
in the jjoliticcd world. As soon as the national debt of the 
United States shall be discharged by the sale of one portion 
of those lands, we shall then see the Confederate Republic 
in a new character, as a proprietor of lands, either for sale 
or to let upon rents, while other nations may be struggling 
under debts too enormous to be discharged either by econ- 
omy or taxation, and while they may be laboring to raise 
ordinary and necessary supplies by burdensome impositions 
upon their own persons and properties. Here will be a 
nation possessed of a new and unheard-of financial organ of 
stupendous magnitude, and in process of time of tinmeasured 
value, thrown into their lap as a fortuitous superfluity, and 
almost without being sought for. 

" When such an organ of revenue begins to arise into 
produce and exertion, what public uses it may be appli- 
cable to, or to what abuses and perversions it might be 
rendered subservient, is far beyond the reach of probable 
discussion now. Such discussions would only be visionary 
speculations. However, thus far it is obvious and highly 



GALIANI, 1776. 103 

deserving of our attention that it cannot fail becoming to 
the American States a most important instrument of 
national power, the progress and operation of which must 
hereafter be a most interesting object of attention to the British 
American dominions which are in close vicinity to the terri- 
tories of the United /States, and I should hope that these 
considerations would lead ttS) inasmuch as we value those 
parts of our dominions, to encourage conciliatory and ami- 
cable correspondence between them and their neighbors" 

This private communication, now for the first time 
seeing the light, is full of prophecy, or of that remark- 
able discernment and forecast which mark the prophetic 
spirit, whether in announcing "the future population 
of millions superadded to millions," or in the high esti- 
mate of the National Territory, destined to become in a 
few years " an unparalleled phenomenon in the political 
world," — "a new and unheard-of financial organ of stu- 
pendous magnitude." How few at home saw the Public 
Lands with as clear a vision as Hartley ! 



GALIANI, 1776, 1778. 

Among the most brilliant in this extending list is 
the Abbe Galiani, the Neapolitan, who was born 1728, 
and died at Naples 1787. Although Italian by birth, 
yet by the accident of official residence he became for 
a while domesticated in France, wrote the French 
language, and now enjoys a French reputation. His 
writings in French and his letters have the wit and 
ease of Voltaire. 

Galiani was a genius. Whatever he touched shone 
at once with his brightness, in which there was origi- 
nality as well as knowledge. He was a finished scholar, 



104 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

and very successful in lapidary verses. Early in life, 
while in Italy, lie wrote a grave essay on Money, which 
contrasted with another of rare humor suggested by 
the death of the public executioner. Other essays 
followed, and then came the favor of the congenial 
pontiff, Benedict XIV. In 1760 he found himself at 
Paris as Secretary of the Neapolitan Embassy. Min- 
gling with courtiers officially, according to the duties 
of his position, he fraternized with the liberal and 
adventurous spirits who exercised such influence over 
society and literature. He was recognized as one of 
them, and inferior to none. His petty stature Mas for- 
gotten, when he conversed with inexhaustible faculties 
of all kinds, so that he seemed an Encyclopaedia, Harle- 
quin, and Machiavelli all in one. The atheists at the 
Thursday dinner of D'Holbach were confounded, while 
he enforced the existence of God. Into the cpuestions 
of political economy occupying attention at the time 
he entered with a pen which seemed borrowed from 
the French Academy. His Dialogues sur Ic Commerce 
des Bles had the success of a romance ; ladies carried 
this book on corn in their work-baskets. Returning to 
Naples, he continued to live in Paris through his corre- 
spondence, especially with Madame d'Epinay, the Baron 
d'Holbach, Diderot, and Grimm. 1 

Among later works, after his return to Naples, was 
a solid volume — not to be forgotten in the History 
of International Law — on the "Bights of Neutrals," 
where a difficult subject is treated with such mastery 
that, half a century later, D'Hautefeuille, in his elabo- 
rate treatise, copies from it at length. Galiani was the 

1 Biographie Universelle of Michaud; also of Didot; Louis Blanc, His- 
toire de la Revolution Francaise, Tom. I. pp. 390, 545 - 551. 



GALIANI, 177G. 105 

predecessor of this French writer in the extreme asser- 
tion of neutral rights. Other works were left at his 
death in manuscript, some grave and some humorous ; 
also letters without number. The letters preserved 
from Italian savans filled eight large volumes ; those 
from savans, ministers, and sovereigns abroad filled four- 
teen. His Parisian correspondence did not see the light 
till 1818, although some of the letters may be found 
in the contemporary correspondence of Grimm. 

In his Parisian letters, which are addressed chiefly 
to that clever individuality, Madame d'Epinay, the 
Neapolitan abbe shows not only the brilliancy and 
nimbleness of his talent, hut the universality of his 
knowledge and the boldness of his speculations. Here 
are a few words from a letter dated at Naples, 12th 
October, 1776, in which he brings forward the idea of 
"races," so important in our day, with an illustration 
from Eussia : — 

"All depends on races. The first, the most noble of 
races, comes naturally from the North of Asia. The Rus- 
sians are the nearest to it, and this is the reason why 
they have made more progress in fifty years than can be 
got out of the Portuguese in five hundred." 1 

Belonging to the Latin race, Galiani was entitled to 
speak thus freely. 

In another letter to Madame d'Epinay, dated at 
Naples, 18th May, 1776, he had already foretold the 
success of our Eevolution. Few prophets have been 
more explicit than he was in the following passage: — 

" Livy said of his age, which so much resembled ours, 
' Ad hsec tempora ventum est quibus, nee vitia nostra, nee 

l Correspondance, Tom. II. p. 221. See also Grimm, Correspondance, 
Tom. IX. p. 282. 

5* 



106 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

remedia pati possumus,' — ' We are iu an age where the 
remedies hurt as much as the vices.' Do you know the 
reality] The epoch has come of the total fall of Europe, 
and of transmigration into America. All here turns into 
rottenness, — religion, laws, arts, sciences, — and all has- 
tens to renew itself in America. This is not a jest ; nor 
is it an idea drawn from the English quarrels ; I have 
said it, announced it, preached it, for more than twenty 
years, and I have constantly seen my prophecies come to 
pass. Therefore, do not buy your house in the Chaussee 
cVAntin ; you must buy it in Philadelphia. My trouble is 
that there are no abbeys in America." 1 

This letter was written- some months before the 
Declaration of Independence was known in Europe. 

In another, dated at Naples, 7th February, 1778, 
the Abbe alludes to the " quantities " of English men 
and women who have come to Naples "for shelter 
from the American tempest," and adds, "Meanwhile 
the Washingtons and Hancocks will be fatal to them." 2 
In still another, dated at Naples, 25th July, 1778, he re- 
news his prophecies in language still more explicit : — 

"You will at this time have decided the greatest revo- 
lution of the globe ; namely, if it is America which is to 
reign over Europe, or if it is Europe which is to continue 
to reign over America. I will wager in favor of America, 
for the reason merely physical, that for five thousand years 
genius has turned opposite to the diurnal motion, and trav- 
elled from the East to the West." 3 

Here again is the idea of Berkeley which has been 
so captivating. 

i Correspondance, Tom. II. p. 203; Grimm, Tom. IX. p. 285. 

2 Correspondance, Tom. II. p. 275. 

3 Ibid., Tom. II. p. 275. 



ADAM SMITH, 1776. 107 



ADAM SMITH, 1776. 

In contrast with the witty Italian is the illustrious 
philosopher and writer of Scotland, Adam Smith, who 
was born 5th June, 1723, and died 17th July, 1790. 
His fame is so commanding that any details of life or 
works would be out of place. He was thinker and 
inventor, through whom mankind was advanced in 
knowledge. 

I say nothing of his " Theory of Moral Sentiments," 
constituting an important contribution to the science 
of ethics, but come at once to his great work of politi- 
cal economy, entitled " Inquiry into the Nature and 
Sources of the Wealth of Nations," which first appeared 
in 1776. Its publication marks an epoch described by 
Mr. Buckle when he says : 1 " Adam Smith contributed 
more, by the publication of this single work, toward 
the happiness of man, than has been effected by the 
united abilities of all the statesmen and legislators of 
whom history has preserved an authentic account." 
The work is full of prophetic knowledge, and especially 
with regard to the British colonies. Writing while 
the debate with the mother country was still pending, 
Adam Smith urged that they should be admitted to 
Parliamentary representation in proportion to taxation, 
so that their representation would enlarge with their 
growing resources ; and here he predicts nothing less 
than the transfer of empire. 

" The distance of America from the seat of government, 
the natives of that countiy might flatter themselves, with 
some appearance of reason too, would not be of very long 

1 History of Civilization in England, Vol. I. p. 216. 



108 PKOPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

continuance. Such has hitherto been the rapid progress 
of that country in wealth, population, and improvement, 
that, in the course of little more than a century, perhaps, 
the produce of America might exceed that of British taxa- 
tion. The seat of the empire would then naturally remove 
itself to that part of the empire which contributed most to 
the general defence and support of the whole." 1 

In these tranquil words of assured science the great 
author carries the seat of government across the At- 
lantic. 

Did Adam Smith in this remarkable passage do 
more than follow a hint from our own prophet ? The 
prophecy of the great economist first appeared in 1776. 
In the course of 1774 and down to April 19, 1775, 
John Adams published in the Boston Gazette a series 
of weekly articles under the signature of Novanglus, 
which were abridged in Almon's Eemembrancer for 
1775, with the following title, " History of the Dis- 
pute with America, from its origin in 1754 to the 
present time." Although this abridged edition stops 
before the prophetic passage, it is not impossible that 
the whole series was known to Adam Smith. After 
speculating, as the latter did afterwards, on the exten- 
sion of the British Constitution and Parliamentary 
representation to the outlying British dominions, our 
prophet says : — 

" If in twenty years more America should have six mil- 
lions of inhabitants, as there is a boundless territory to 
fill up, she must have five hundred representatives. Upon 
these principles, if in forty years she should have twelve 
millions, a thousand ; and if the inhabitants of the three 
kingdoms remain as they are, being already full of inhabi- 

l Wealth of Nations, Book IV. cap. 7, part 3. 



ADAM SMITH, 17/6. 109 

tants, what will become of your supreme legislature 1 It 
will be translated, crown and all, to America. This is a 
sublime system for America. It will flatter those ideas of 
independency which the Tories impute to them, if they 
have any such, more than any other plan of independency 
that I have ever heard projected." 1 

Thus plainly was John Adams precursor of Adam 
Smith. 

These papers were reprinted without abridgment in 
London, in 1784, by Stockdale, with the title "History 
of the Disputes with America from their origin in 
1754, written in the year 1774." The Monthly Re- 
view, in a notice of the publication, after speaking of 
" the inauspicious system of American taxation," says, 
" Mr. Adams foretold the consequence of obstinately 
adhering to it, and the event hath too well verified his 
predictions. They were, however, predictions which 
required no inspiration." 2 So that his wise second 
sight was recognized in England much beyond the 
prevision of Adam Smith. 

The idea of transporting the seat of government to 
America was often attributed to Franklin by Dean 
Tucker. The former in a letter, as early as 25th No- 
vember, 1767, reports the Dean as saying, "That is his 
constant plan." 3 In one of his tracts, 4 the Dean attrib- 
utes it not only to Franklin, but also to our people. 
With strange exaggeration he says : " It has been the 
unanimous opinion of the North Americans for these 
fifty years past, that the seat of empire ought to be 

1 Works, Vol. IV. pp. 4, 101, 102; Almon's Remembrancer. 

2 1784, Vol. I. p. 478. 

3 Works by Sparks, Vol. VII. p. 366. 

4 Answers to certain Popular Objections against separating from the 
Rebellions Colonies. Glocester, 1776. 



110 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

transferred from the lesser to the greater country, that 
is, from England to America, or as Dr. Franklin elegant- 
ly phrased it, from the cock-boat to the man-of-war." 1 
It is impossible to say how much of this was from the 
excited brain of the Dean. 2 

DR. RICHARD PRICE, 1776, 1777, 1778, 1784. 

A true and solid ally of our country at a critical pe- 
riod was Dr. Price, dissenting clergyman, metaphysician, 
political writer, and mathematician, who was born in 
Wales, 23d February, 1723, and died in London, 17th 
March, 1791. 

His earliest labors were a " Review of the Principal 
Questions and Difficulties in Morals," by which he was 
recognized as a metaphysician, and a " Treatise on Re- 
versionary Payments," by which he was recognized as 
an authority on a large class of financial questions. At 
the same time his sermons were regarded as excellent. 
Amidst these various labors he was moved to enlist as a 
pamphleteer in defence of the American Colonies. This 
service, prompted by a generous devotion to just princi- 
ples, awakened grateful sentiments on both sides of the 
ocean. 

The Common Council of London marked its sympa- 
thy by voting him the freedom of the city in a gold box 
of £ 50 value. The American Congress sent him a dif- 
ferent testimonial, officially communicated to him, being 
a solemn resolution declaring " the desire of Congress to 
consider him as a citizen of the United States, and to 
receive his assistance in regulating their finances." 3 In 

i Page 59. 

2 See also Cui Bono V p. 87. 

8 John Adams, Works, Vol. VII. p. 71. 



DR. RICHARD PRICE, 1776. Ill 

reply, under date of 18th January, 1779, while declining 
the invitation, he offered "assurances that Dr. Price 
feels the warmest gratitude for the notice taken of him, 
and that he looks to the American States as now the 
hope and likely soon to become the refuge of mankind." * 
Franklin and Adams contracted with him relations of 
friendship. The former, under date of 6th February, 1780, 
wrote him : " Your writings, after all the abuse you 
and they have met with, begin to make serious impres- 
sions on those who at first rejected the counsels you 
gave." 2 And 2d October, 1788, he wrote to another: 
" Eemember me affectionately to good Dr. Price." 3 The 
latter, in correspondence many years afterwards, recorded 
the intimacy he enjoyed with Dr. Price at the house of 
the latter, "at his own house and at the houses and 
tables of many friends." i 

The first of his American tracts was in 1776, being 
" Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Prin- 
ciples of Government, and the Justice and Policy of the 
War with America." The sale of sixty thousand copies 
in a few months shows the extensive acceptance of the 
work. The general principles so clearly exhibited are 
invoked for America. Occasionally the philosopher be- 
comes prophet, as when he predicts the growth of popu- 
lation : — 

" They are now but little short of half our number. To 
this number they have grown from a small body of original 
settlers by a very rapid increase. The probability is that 
they will go on to increase, and that in fifty or sixty years 
they will be double our number and form a mighty empire, 

1 Writings of Franklin by Sparks, Vol. VIII. p. 355. 

2 Ibid., p. 417. 

3 Ibid., Vol. X. p. 365. 

4 Letter to Jefferson, September 14, 1813. Works, Vol. X. p. 175. 



112 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

consisting of a variety of States, all equal or superior to our- 
selves in all the arts and accomplishments which give dignity 
and happiness to human life." x 

Nothing less than " a vast continent " seems to him the 
sphere of this remarkable development, and he revolts 
at the idea of this being held " at the discretion of a 
handful of people on the other side of the Atlantic." 
In the measures which brought on the war he saw " the 
hand of Providence working to bring about some great 
end." 2 And the vast continent was to be dedicated to 
Liberty. The excellent man saw even the end of slav- 
ery. Speaking of "the negroes of the southern colonies," 
he said that they " probably will have either soon become 
extinct or have their condition changed into that of free- 
men." 3 Years and battle intervened before this precious 
result. 

This production was followed in 1777 by " Addi- 
tional Observations on the Nature and Value of Civil 
Liberty and the War with America," to which were 
added " Observations on Public Loans, the National 
Debt, and the Debt and Eesources of France." In all 
this variety of topics, his concern for America breaks 
forth in the inquiry, " Must not humanity shudder at 
such a war ? " And he sees untold loss to England, 
which, with the Colonies, " might be the greatest and 
happiest nation that ever existed"; but without them 
" we are no more one people ; our existence depends on 
keeping them." This patriotic gloom is checked by an- 
other vision : — 

" These measures have, in all probability, hastened the 
disruption of the new from the old world, ivhich will begin a 

1 Pages 25, 26. 2 p age 55. 8 p a ge 41, note. 



DR. RICHARD PRICE, 17S4. 113 

new era in the annals of mankind, and produce a revolution 
more important, perhaps, than any that has happened in 
human affairs." x 

Thus was American independence heralded and its 
influence foretold. 

Constantly sympathizing with America, and impressed 
by the magnitude of the issue, his soul found another 
utterance in 1778, in what he called " The General In- 
troduction to the Two Tracts on Civil Liberty, the War 
with America, and the Finances of the Kingdom." Here 
again he sees a vision : — 

"A great people, likely to be formed, in spite of all our 
efforts, into free communities, under governments, which 
have no religious tests and establishments ! A new era in 
future annals, and a new opening in human affairs, begin- 
ning among the descendants of Englishmen, in a new world ! 
A rising empire, extended over an immense continent, without 
bishops, without nobles, and without kings." 2 

After the recognition of Independence and the estab- 
lishment of peace, Dr. Price appeared with another 
tract : " Observations on the Iniportance of the Ameri- 
can Revolution and the Means of making it a Benefit to 
the World." This was in 1784. And here he repeated 
the exultation of an earlier day : — 

" With heartfelt satisfaction I see the revolution in favor 
of universal liberty which has taken place in America, — a 
revolution which opens a new prospect in human affairs, and 
begins a new era in the history of mankind. 8 .... Perhaps 
I do not go too far when I say that, next to the introduction 
of Christianity among mankind, the American revolution 

1 Page 49. 2 p age i x . 3 p age 2. 

H 



114 PEOPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

may prove the most important step in the progressive course 
of human improvement." 1 

Thus announcing the grandeur of the epoch, he states 
that it " may produce a general diffusion of the prin- 
ciples of humanity," and may lead mankind to see and 
know " that all legitimate government consists in the 
dominion of equal laivs, made with common consent," 
which is another expression of the primal truth of the 
Declaration of Independence. Then, referring to the 
" community or confederacy" of States, he says "that it 
is not impossible but that by some such means univer- 
sal peace may some time or other be produced, and all 
war excluded from the world"; and he asks, "Why may 
we not hope to see this begun in America ? " 2 May 
America be true to this aspiration ! There is also a 
longing for equality, and a warning against slavery, 
with the ejaculation, in harmony with earlier words, 
" Let the United States continue forever what it is now 
their glory to be, a confederation of States, prosperous 
and happy, without lords, without bishops, and without 
Icings" 3 In the midst of the bloody conflict this vision 
had appeared, and he had sought to make it a reality. 

His true friendship for our country and his devotion 
to humanity, with the modesty of his nature, appear in 
a letter to Franklin, 12th July, 1784, communicating a 
copy of the last production. After saying that " it is 
intended entirely for America," the excellent counsellor 
proceeds : — 

" I hope the United States will forgive my presumption in 
supposing myself qualified to advise them. The conscious- 
ness which I have that it is well intended, and that my ad- 

1 Page 6. 2 p a p. e 15. 3 p a o- e 72. 



GOVERNOR POWNALL, 1777. 115 

dress to them is the effusion of a heart that wishes to serve 
the best interests of society, helps to reconcile me to myself 
in this instance, and it will, I hope, engage the candor of 
others." * 

The same sentiments which proved his sympathies 
with our country reappeared with fresh fires at the out- 
break of the French Revolution, arousing, in opposition, 
the immortal eloquence of Burke. A discourse " On the 
Love of Country," preached at the Old Jewry, 4th No- 
vember, 1789, in commemoration of the English Re volu- 
tion, with friendly glances at what was then passing 
across the Channel, prompted the " Reflections on the 
Revolution in France." The personal denunciation which 
is the beginning of that remarkable performance is the 
perpetual witness to the position of the preacher, whose 
prophetic soul did not hesitate to accept the French 
Revolution side by side with ours in glory and in 
promise. 

GOVERNOR POWNALL, 1777, 17S0, 1785. 

Among the best friends of our country abroad during 
the trials of the Revolution was Thomas Pownall, called 
by one biographer " a learned antiquary and politician," 
and by another "an English statesman and author." 
Latterly he has so far dropped out of sight that there 
are few who recognize in him either of these characters. 
He was born, 1722, and died at Bath, 1805. During 
this long period he held several offices. As early as 
1745 he became secretary to the Commission for Trade 
and Plantations. Tn 1753 he crossed the ocean. In 
1755, as Commissioner for Massachusetts Bay, he ne- 

l Franklin, Works by Sparks, Vol. X. p. 105. 



116 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

gotiated with New York, New Jersey, and Pennsyl- 
vania, in union with New England, the confederated 
expedition against Crown Point. He was afterwards 
Governor of Massachusetts Bay, New Jersey, and South 
Carolina, successively. Returning to England, he was, 
in 1761, Comptroller-General of the army in Germany, 
with the military rank of colonel. He sat in three 
successive Parliaments until 1780, when he passed into 
private life. Hildreth gives a glimpse of his personal 
character, when, admitting his frank manners and lib- 
eral politics, he describes his " habits as rather freer 
than suited the New England standard." 1 

Pownall stands forth conspicuous for championship 
of our national independence, and especially for fore- 
sight with regard to our national future. In both these 
respects his writings are unique. Other Englishmen 
were in favor of independence, and saw our future also ; 
but I doubt if any one can be named who was his 
equal in strenuous action or in minuteness of fore- 
sight. While the war was still proceeding, as early 
as 1780, he openly announced, not only that inde- 
pendence was inevitable, but that the new nation, 
" founded in nature and built up in truth," would con- 
tinually expand ; that its population would increase 
and multiply ; that a civilizing activity beyond what 
Europe could ever know would animate it; and that 
its commercial and naval power would be found in 
every quarter of the globe. All this he set forth at 
length with argument and illustration, and he called 
his prophetic words " the stating of tJie simple fact, so 
little understood in the Old World." Treated at first 
as " unintelligible speculation " and as " unfashionable," 

l History of the United States, Vol. II. p. 476. 



GOVERNOR POWNALL, 1777. 117 

the truth he announced was neglected where it was 
not rejected, but generally rejected as inadmissible, and 
the author, according to his own language, " was called 
by the wise men of the British Cabinet a Wild Man, 
unfit to be employed." But these writings are a better 
title now than any office. In manner they are diffuse 
and pedantic; but they hardly deserve the cold judg- 
ment of John Adams, who in his old age said of them 
that "a reader who has patience to search for good 
sense in an uncouth and disgusting style will find in 
those writings . proofs of a thinking mind." x 

He seems to have written a good deal. But the 
works which will be remembered the longest are not 
even mentioned by several of his biographers. Kose, 
in his Biographical Dictionary, records works by him, 
entitled " Antiquities of Ancient Greece " ; " Eoman An- 
tiquities dug up at Bath " ; " Observations on the Cur- 
rents of the Ocean " ; " Intellectual Physics " ; and also 
contributions to the Archneologia. Gorton in his Bio- 
graphical Dictionary adds other titles to this list. But 
neither mentions his works on America. This is an- 
other instance where the stone rejected by the builders 
becomes the head of the corner. 

At an early date Pownall comprehended the position 
of our country, geographically. He saw the wonderful 
means of internal communication supplied by its inland 
waters, and also the opportunities of external commerce 
supplied by the Atlantic Ocean. On the first he dwells, 
in a memorial drawn up in 1756 for the Duke of Cum- 
berland. 2 Nobody in our own day, after the experience 
of more than a century, has portrayed more vividly 

i Letter to William Tudor, February 4, 1817. Works, Vol. X. p. 241. 
2 Administration of the Colonies, Appendix, p. 7. 



118 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

the two vast aqueous masses, — one composed of the 
great lakes and their dependencies, and the other of 
the Mississippi and its tributaries. The great lakes 
are described as " a wilderness of waters spreading 
over the country by an infinite number and variety of 
branchings, bays, and straits." The Mississippi, with 
its eastern branch, called the Ohio, is described as 
having, " so far as we know, but two falls, — one at a 
place called, by the French, St. Antoine, high up on 
the west or main branch " ; and all its waters " run 
to the ocean with a still, easy, and gentle "current." 
The picture is completed by exhibiting the two masses 
in combination : — 

"The waters of each respective mass — not only the 
lesser streams, but the main general body of each going 
through this continent in every course and direction — 
have by their approach to each other, by their communi- 
cation to every quarter and in every direction, an alliance 
and unity, and form one mass, or one whole." 1 

Again, depicting the intercommunication among the 
several waters of the continent, and how "the watery 
element claims and holds dominion over this extent 
of land," he insists that all shall see these two mighty 
masses in their central throne, declaring that " the great 
lakes which lie upon its bosom on one hand, and the 
great river Mississippi and the multitude of waters 
which run into it, form there a communication, — an 
alliance or dominion of the watery element, that com- 
mands throughout the whole ; that these great lakes 
appear to be the throne, the centre of a dominion, 
whose influence, by an infinite number of rivers, creeks, 

1 Administration of the Colonies, Appendix, p. 6. 



GOVERNOR POWNALL, 1/77. 119 

and streams, extends itself through all and every part 
of the continent, supported by the communication of, 
and alliance with, the waters of the Mississippi." x 

If these means of internal commerce were vast, those 
afforded by the Atlantic Ocean were not less extensive. 
The latter were developed in the volume entitled " The 
Administration of the Colonies," the fourth edition of 
which, published in 1768, is now before me. This was 
after the differences between the Colonies and the 
mother country had begun, but before the idea of 
independence had shown itself. Pownall insisted that 
the Colonies ought to be considered as parts of the 
realm, entitled to representation in Parliament. This 
was a constitutional unity. But he portrayed a com- 
mercial unity also, which he represented in attractive 
forms. The British Isles, and the British possessions 
in the Atlantic and in America, were, according to him, 
"one grand marine dominion," and ought, therefore, by 
policy, to be united into one empire, with one centre. 
On this he dwells at length, and the picture is pre- 
sented repeatedly. 2 It was incident to the crisis in 
the world produced by the predominance of the com- 
mercial spirit already beginning to rule the powers of 
Europe. It was the duty of England to place herself 
at the head of this great movement. 

" As the rising of this crisis forms precisely the object 
on which government should be employed, so the taking 
leading measures towards the forming all those Atlantic 
and American possessions into one empire, of which Great 
Britain should be the commercial and political centre, is 
the precise duty of govei'nment at this crisis." 

1 Administration of the Colonies, p. 9. 

2 Ibid., pp 9, 10, 164. 



120 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

This was his desire. But he saw clearly the resources 
as well as the rights of the Colonies, and was satisfied 
that, if power were not consolidated under the consti- 
tutional auspices of England, it would be transferred 
to the other side of the Atlantic. Here his words are 
prophetic : — 

" The whole train of events, the whole course of business, 
must perpetually bring forward into practice, and necessarily 
in the end into establishment, either an American or a Brit- 
ish union. There is no other alternative." 

The necessity for union is enforced in a manner 
which foreshadows our national Union : — 

" The Colonial Legislature does not answer all purposes ; 
is incompetent and inadequate to many purposes. Some- 
thing more is necessary, — either a common union among 
themselves, or a common union of subordination under the 
one general legislature of the state." 1 

Then, again, in another place of the same work, after 
representing the declarations of power over the Colonies 
as little better than mockery, he prophesies : — 

"Such is the actual state of the really existing system 
of our dominions, that neither the power of government over 
these various parts can long continue under the present mode 
of administration, nor the great interests of commerce ex- 
tended throughout the whole long subsist under the present 
system of the laws of trade." 2 

Eecent events may give present interest to his views, 
in this same work, on the nature and necessity of a 
paper currency, where he follows Franklin. The prin- 

1 Administration of the Colonies, p. 165. 

2 Ibid., p. 16. 



GOVERNOR POWNALL, 1777. 121 

cipal points of his plan were, that bills of credit, to a 
certain amount, should be printed in England for the 
use of the Colonies ; that a loan-office should be estab- 
lished in each Colony to issue bills, take securities, and 
receive the payment ; that the bills should be issued 
for ten years, bearing interest at five per cent, — one 
tenth part of the sum borrowed to be paid annually, 
with interest ; and that they should be a legal tender. 

When the differences had flamed forth in war, then 
the prophet became more earnest. . His utterances 
deserve to be rescued from oblivion. He was open, 
almost defiant. As early as 2d December, 1777, some 
months before our treaty with France, he declared, 
from his place in Parliament, " that the sovereignty 
of this country over America is abolished and gone 
forever " ; " that they are determined at all events to 
be independent, and will he so " ; and " that all the 
treaty this country can ever expect with America is 
federal, and that, probably, only commercial." In this 
spirit he said to the House : — 

" Until you shall be convinced that you are no longer 
sovereigns over America, but that the United States are 
an independent, sovereign people, — until you are prepared 
to treat with them as such, — it is of no consequence at 
all what schemes or plans of conciliation this side of the 
House or that may adopt." 1 

The position taken in Parliament he maintained by 
writings, and here he depicted the great destinies of 
our country. He began with "A Memorial to the 
Sovereigns of Europe," published early in 1780, and 
afterwards, through the influence of John Adams, 

1 Parliamentary History, Vol. XIX. pp. 527, 528. See also p. 1137. 
6 



122 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

while at the Hague, abridged and translated into 
French. In this remarkable production independence 
was the least that he claimed for us. Thus he fore- 
tells our future : — 

"North America is become a new primary planet in the 
system of the world, which, while it takes its own course, 
must have effect on the orbit of every other planet, and 
shift the common centre of gravity of the whole system of 
the European world. North America is de facto an inde- 
pendent power, which has taken its equal station with other 

powers, and must be so de jure The independence 

of America is fixed as fate. She is mistress of her own 
future, knows that she is so, and will actuate that power 
which she feels she hath, so as to establish her own system 
and to change the system of Europe." 1 

Not only is the new power to take an independent 
place, hut it is " to change the system of Europe." For 
all this its people are amply prepared. " Standing on 
that high ground of improvement up to which the most 
enlightened parts of Europe have advanced, like eaglets, 
they commence the first efforts of their pinions from a 
towering advantage." 2 This same conviction appears 
in another form : — 

"North America has advanced, and is every day advan- 
cing, to growth of state, with a steady and continually 
accelerating motion, of which there has never yet been 
any example in Europe. 3 .... It is a vitality, liable to 
many disorders, many dangerous diseases ; but it is young 
and strong, and will struggle, by the vigor of internal 
healing principles of life, against those evils, and surmount 
them. Its strength will grow with its years." 4 

1 Memorial to the Sovereigns of Europe, pp. 4, 5. 

2 Ibid., p. 43. 3 Ibid., p. 56. 4 Ibid., p. 69. 



GOVERNOR POWNALL, 1780. 123 

He then dwells in detail on "the progressive popu- 
lation " here ; on our advantage in being " on the other 
side of the globe, where there is no enemy " ; on the 
products of the soil, among which is " bread-corn to a 
degree that has wrought it to a staple export for the 
supply of the Old World " ; on the fisheries, which 
he calls " mines of more solid riches than all the sil- 
ver of Potosi " ; on the inventive spirit of the people ; 
and on their commercial activity. Of such a people 
it is easy to predict great things ; and our prophet an- 
nounces, — 

1. That the new state will be " an active naval 
power," exercising a peculiar influence on commerce, 
and, through commerce, on the political system of the 
Old World, — becoming the arbitress of commerce, and, 
perhaps, the mediatrix of peace. 1 

2. That shipbuilding and the science of navigation 
have made such progress in America that her people 
will be able to build and navigate cheaper than any 
country in Europe, even Holland, with all her economy. 2 

3. That the peculiar articles to be had from America 
only, and so much sought in Europe, must give Amer- 
icans a preference in those markets. 3 

4. That a people " whose empire stands singly pre- 
dominant on a great continent" can hardly "suffer in 
their borders such a monopoly as the European Hudson 
Bay Company " ; that it cannot be stopped by Cape 
Horn or the Cape of Good Hope; that before long 
they will be found " trading in the South Sea and in 
China " ; and that the Dutch " w T ill hear of them in the 
Spice Islands." 4 

1 Memorial to the Sovereigns of Europe, pp. 74, 77. 

2 Ibid., p. 82. 3 ibid., p. 83. ^ ibid., p. 85. 



124 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

5. That by constant intercommunion of business and 
correspondence, and by increased knowledge with re- 
gard to the ocean, " America will seem every day to 
approach nearer and nearer to Europe " ; that the old 
alarm at the sea will subside, and " a thousand attrac- 
tive motives will become the irresistible cause of an 
almost general emigration to the New World " ; and 
that " many of the most useful, enterprising spirits, and 
much of the active property, will go there also." 1 

6. That " North America will become a free port to 
all the nations of the world indiscriminately, and will 
expect, insist on, and demand, in fair reciprocity, a free 
market in all those nations with whom she trades " ; 
and that, adhering to this principle, she must be, "in 
the course of time, the chief carrier of the commerce 
of the whole world." 2 

7. That America must avoid complication with Eu- 
ropean politics, or " the entanglement of alliances, hav- 
ing no connections with Europe other than commer- 
cial " ; 3 — all of which at a later day was put forth 
by Washington in his Farewell Address w T hen he said : 
" The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign 
nations, is, in extending our commercial relations, to 
have with them as little political concern as possible " ; 
and also when he said : " Why, by interweaving our 
destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our 
peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, 
rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice ? " 4 

8. That similar modes of living and thinking, the 
same manners and same fashions, the same language 

1 Memorial to the Sovereigns of Europe, p. 87. 

2 Ibid., pp. 80, 97. 

3 Ibid., p. 78. 

4 Writings by Sparks, Vol. XII. pp 231, 232. 



GOVERNOR POWNALL, 1782, 1783. 125 

and old habits of national love, impressed on the heart 
and not yet effaced, the very indentings of the fracture 
where North America is broken off from England, all 
conspire naturally to a rcjuncture by alliance. 1 

9. That the sovereigns of Europe, "who have despised 
the unfashioned, awkward youth of America," and have 
neglected to interweave their interests with the rising 
States, when they find the system of the new empire 
not only obstructing, but superseding, the old system 
of Europe, and crossing all their settled maxims, will 
call upon their ministers and wise men, " Come, curse 
me this people, for they are too mighty for me." 2 

This remarkable appeal was followed by two memo- 
rials, " drawn up solely for the king's use, and designed 
solely for his eye," dated at Richmond, January, 1782, 
where the author most persuasively urges his Majesty 
to treat with the Colonies on the footing of indepen- 
dence, and with this view to institute a preliminary ne- 
gotiation " as with free states de facto under a truce." 
And on the signature of the treaty of peace he wrote a 
private letter to Franklin, dated at Richmond, 28th 
February, 1783, where he testifies again to the magni- 
tude of the event : — 

" My old Friend, — I write this to congratulate you on 
the establishment of your country as a free and sovereign 
power, taking its equal station amongst the powers of the 
world. I congratulate you, in particular, as chosen by 
Providence to be a principal instrument in this great Revo- 
lution, — a Revolution that has stranger marks of Divine in- 
terposition, superseding the ordinary course of human affairs, 
than any other event ivhich this ivorld has experienced." 

1 Memorial to the Sovereigns of Europe, p. 93. 

2 Ibid., p. 91. 



126 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

The prophet closes his letter by allusion to a pro- 
posed tour of America, adding that, " if there ever was 
an object worth travelling to see, and worthy of the 
contemplation of a philosopher, it is that in which he 
may see the beginning of a great empire at its foun- 
dation." * He communicated this purpose also to John 
Adams, who answered him that " he would be received 
respectfully in every part of America, that he had 
always been considered friendly to America, and that 
his writings had been useful to our cause." 2 

Then came another word, first published in 1783, 
entitled "A Memorial addressed to the Sovereigns of 
America, by Governor Pownall," of which he gave the 
mistaken judgment to a private friend, that it was " the 
best thing *he ever wrote." Here for the first time 
American citizens are called " sovereigns." At the 
beginning he explains and indicates the simplicity 
with which he addresses them : — 

" Having presumed to address to the Sovereigns of Eu- 
rope a Memorial .... permit me now to address this 
Memorial to you, Sovereigns of America. I shall not ad- 
dress you with the court titles of Gothic Europe, nor with 
those of servile Asia. I will neither address }-our Sublim- 
ity or Majesty, your Grace or Holiness, your Eminence or 
High-mightiness, your Excellence or Honors. What are 
titles where things themselves are known and understood 1 
What title did the Republic of Rome take 1 The state was 
known to be sovereign and the citizens to be- free. What 
could add to this 1 ? Therefore, United States and Citizens 
of America, I address you as yon are." 8 

i Franklin, Works by Sparks, Vol. IX. p. 491. 

2 John Adams, Works, Vol. VIII. p. 179. 

8 Memorial to the Sovereigns of America, pp. 5, 6. 



GOVERNOR POWNALL, 1783. 127 

Here again are the same constant sympathy with 
liberty, the same confidence in our national destinies, 
and the same aspirations for our prosperity,- mingled 
with warnings against disturbing influences. He ex- 
horts that all our foundations should be " laid in na- 
ture " ; that there should be " no contention for, nor 
acquisition of, unequal domination in men " ; and 
that union should be established on the attractive 
principle by which all are drawn to a common centre. 
He fears difficulty in making the line of frontier be- 
tween us and the British Provinces " a line of peace," 
as it ought to be ; he is anxious lest something may 
break out between us and Spain ; and he suggests that 
possibly, " in the cool hours of unimpassionecl reflec- 
tion," we may learn the danger of our " alliances," — 
referring plainly to that original alliance with France 
which, at a later day, was the occasion of such trouble. 
Two other warnings occur. One is against Slavery, 
which is more memorable, because in an earlier me- 
morial he enumerates among articles of commerce 
"African slaves carried by a circuitous trade in Amer- 
can shipping to the West India market." * The other 
warning is thus strongly expressed : " Every inhabi- 
tant of America is, de facto as well as de jure, equal, 
in his essential, inseparable rights of the individual,- to 
any other individual, and is, in these rights, indepen- 
dent of any power that any other can assume over him, 
over his labor, or his property. Tins is a principle in 
act and deed, and not a mere speculative theorem." 2 

This strange and striking testimony, all from one man, 
is enhanced by his farewell words to Franklin. As 

1 Memorial to the Sovereigns of Europe, p. 83. 

2 Memorial to the Sovereigns of America, p. 55. 



128 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

Pownall heard that the great philosopher and negotiator 
was about to embark for the United States, he wrote to 
him from Lausanne, 3d July, 1785 : — 

" Adieu, my dear friend. You are goiug to a New World, 
formed to exhibit a scene which the Old World never yet 
saw. You leave me here in the Old World, which, like my- 
self, begins to feel, as Asia hath felt, that it is wearing out 
apace. We shall never meet again on this earth ; but there 
is another world where we shall, and ivhere toe shall be under- 
stood." 

The correspondence was continued across the inter- 
vening ocean. In a letter to Franklin, dated at Bris- 
tol, 8th April, 1788, the same devoted reformer refers 
to the Congress at Albany in 1754, " when the events, 
which have since come into fact, first began to develop 
themselves, as ready to burst into bloom and to bring 
forth the fruits of liberty which you at present enjoy." 
He is cheered in his old age by the proceedings in 
the convention to frame a constitution with Franklin's 
" report of a system of sovereignty founded in law and 
above which law only was sovereign," and he begins 
" to entertain hopes for the liberties of America, and 
for what will lie an asylum one day or other to a rem- 
nant of mankind who wish and deserve to live with 
political liberty." His disturbance at the Presidential 
term breaks out : " I have some fears of mischief from 
the orbit of four years' period, which you give to the 
rotation of the office of President. It may become the 
oround of intrigue." 1 Here friendly anxiety is ele- 
vated by hope where America appears as the asylum 
of Liberty. 

l Franklin, Works, Vol. X. pp. 343, 344. 



GOVERNOR POWNALL, 1785, 1788. 129 

Clearly Pownall was not understood in his time ; but 
it is evident that he understood our country as few 
Englishmen since have been able to understand it. 

How few of his contemporaries saw America with 
his insight and courage ! The prevailing sentiment was 
typified in the conduct of George III., so boldly 
arraigned in the Declaration of Independence. Indi- 
vidual opinions also attest the contrast and help to 
glorify Pownall. Thus Shirley, like himself a Massa- 
chusetts governor, in advising the King to strengthen 
Louisburg, wrote, under date of July 10, 1745 : — 

" It would, by its vicinity to the British colonies, and 
being the key of 'em, give the crown of Great Britain a 
most absolute bold and command of 'em, if ever there 
should come a time when they should go restiff and dis- 
posed to shake off their dependency upon their mother 
country, the possibility of which seems some centuries further 
off than it does to some gentlemen at home.' 1 1 

Nothing of the prophet here. Nor was Hume more 
penetrating in his History first published, although he 
commemorates properly the early settlement of the 
country : — 

" What chiefly renders the reign of James memorable is 
the commencement of the English colonies in America ; 
colonies established on the noblest footing that has been 
known in any age or nation 

"Speculative reasoning during that age raised many objec- 
tions to the planting of those remote colonies, and foretold 
that, after draining their mother country of inhabitants, 
they would soon shake off their yoke and erect an indepen- 
dent government in America ; but time has shown that the 

1 Palfrey, Compendious History of New England, 1728-65. 
6* I 



130 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

views entertained by those who encouraged such generous 
undertakings were more just and solid. A mild government 
and great moral force have preserved and may still preser-ve 
daring some time the dominion of England over her colonies." 1 

In making the reign of James chiefly memorable 
by the colonies, the eminent historian shows a just 
appreciation of events ; but he seems to have written 
hastily, and rather from imagination than evidence, when 
he announces contemporary prophecy, " that, after 
draining their mother country of inhabitants, they 
would soon shake off their yoke and erect an indepen- 
dent government in America," and is plainly without 
prophetic instinct with regard to " the dominion of 
England over her colonies." 

CERISIER, 1778, 1780. 

Again a Frenchman appears on our list, Antoine 
Marie Cerisier, who was born at Chatillon in the Bresse, 
1749, and died at Paris, 1st July, 1828, after a check- 
ered existence. Being Secretary of the French Lega- 
tion at the Hague, he early became interested in the 
history of Holland and her heroic struggle for indepen- 
dence. An elaborate work in ten volumes on the " Gen- 
eral History of the United Provinces," 2 appearing first 
in French and afterwards translated into Dutch, attests 
his industry and zeal, and down to this day is accepted 
as the best in French literature on this interesting sub- 
ject. Naturally the historian of the mighty effort to 
overthrow the domination of Spain sympathized with 
the kindred effort in America. In a series of works he 
bore his testimony to our cause. 

1 History of England. Appendix to Reign of James I. 

2 Works, Vol. VII. pp. 589, 590. 



C^RISIER, 1778, 1780. 131 

John Adams was received at the Hague as American 
Minister, 19th April, 1782. In his despatch to the Con- 
tinental Congress, 16th May, 1782, he wrote : " How 
shall I mention another gentleman, whose name, per- 
haps, Congress never heard, but who, in my opinion, 
has done more decided and essential service to the 
American cause and reputation within these last eigh- 
teen months, than any other man in Europe." Then, 
after describing him as " beyond all contradiction one 
of the greatest historians and political characters in 
Europe, .... possessed of the most generous prin- 
ciples and sentiments of liberty, and exceedingly de- 
voted by principle and affection to the American cause," 
our Minister announces : " His pen has erected a-monu- 
ment to the American cause more glorious and more 
durable than brass or marble. His writings have been 
read like oracles, and his sentiments weekly echoed and 
re-echoed in gazettes and pamphlets." J And yet these 
have passed out of sight. 

First in time was an elaborate work in French, pur- 
porting to be translated from the English, which ap- 
peared at Utrecht in 1778, entitled, " History of the 
Foundation of the Ancient Republics adapted to the 
present Dispute of Great Britain with the American 
Colonies." Learning and philosophy were elevated by 
visions of the future. With the representation of the 
Colonies in Parliament, he foresees the time when " the 
influence of America will become preponderant in Par- 
liament, and can, perhaps, transport the seat of empire 
to their country, and so, without danger and without 

1 Histoire de la Fondntion des Anciermes R^publiques adapted a la dis- 
pute pr^sente de la Grande Bretagne avec les Colonies Americaines. Utrecht, 
1778. 



132 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

convulsive agitation, render this immense continent, al- 
ready so favored by nature, the theatre of one of the 
greatest and freest governments which ever existed." * 
Then, indulging in another vision, where French emi- 
grants and Canadians, already invited to enter the Con- 
federacy, mingle with English colonists, he beholds at 
the head of the happy settlements " men known for 
their superior genius and their enthusiasm for liberty," 
and he catches the strains of ancient dramatists, " whose 
masterpieces will breathe and inspire the hatred of ty- 
rants and despots." Then touching a practical point in 
government, he exclaims : " The human species will not 
be degraded, outraged by that odious and barbarous dis- 
tinction of nobles and plebeians, as if anybody could be 
more or less than a man." And then again, " Could not 
that admirable democracy which I have so often pleased 
myself in tracing be established there ? " 2 

This was followed in the same year by another publi- 
cation, also in French, entitled " Impartial Observations 
of a True Dutchman, in Answer to the Address of a self- 
styled Good Dutchman to his Countrymen." 3 Here 
there is no longer question of colonial representation in 
Parliament, or of British empire transported to America, 
but of separation, with its lofty future : — 

" This revolution is then the most happy event which 
could arrive to the human species and to all the States 
separately. In fine, sensitive souls see with transport that 
the crime of those who have discovered and devastated this 

1 Page 155. 

2 Page 176. 

8 Observations Impartiales d'un Vrai Hollandois pour servir de Reponse 
au Discours d'un soi-disant Bon Hollandois a ses Compatriotes. Amster- 
dam, 1778. 



CISRISIER, 1778, 1780. 133 

immense continent is at last to be repaired, and recognize 
the United States of North America as replacing the numer- 
ous nations which European cruelty has caused to disappear 
from Southern America." 1 

Then, addressing Englishmen directly, the Frenchman 
thus counsels : — 

" Englishmen ! it is necessary for you to submit to your 
destiny, and renounce people who do not wish longer to 
recognize you. To avoid giving them any anxiet}', and to 
prevent all dispute in the future, have the courage to abandon 
to them the surrounding countries which have not yet thrown off 

your yoke Let Canada make a fourteenth confederate 

State. What glory for you to have labored first for this inter- 
esting revolution ! What glory for you that these settlements, 
derived from your bosom, are associated with a powerful con- 
federation, and govern themselves as a Republic ! " 

The idea of Canada as a "fourteenth confederate 
State " was in unison with the aspiration and invitation 
of the Continental Congress. 

Another friendly work in French, pretending to be 
from the English, saw the light in 1780, and is entitled 
"The Destiny of America; or, Pictorial Dialogues." 2 
Among the parties to the colloquies are Lord North, 
with other English personages, and a Philosopher, who 
must be the author. Among the topics considered 
are the causes of pending events, the policy of European 
powers relative to the war, and the influence it must 
have on the happiness of the Human Family. In an- 
swer to Lord North, who asks the precious means to 

1 Page 15. 

2 Le Destia de 1'AmeVique ou Dialogues Pittoresques. Londres (Hol- 
lande), 1780. 



134 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

save honor and welfare, the Philosopher replies : " Com- 
mence by proclaiming the independence of the thirteen 
revolted Colonies, of Florida, and of Canada, and then, 
in a manner not less solemn, renounce Jamaica, Barba- 
does, and all the Windward Isles." l This is to be fol- 
lowed by the freedom of the Spanish and French colo- 
nies, — also of the Dutch, the Portuguese, and the 
Danish. Then, rising in aspiration, the Philosopher, 
exalting the good of humanity over that of any nation, 
proclaims that the root of future wars must be de- 
stroyed, that the ocean may not be reddened with 
blood ; but this destiny will be prolonged " if America 
does not become entirely free." 2 Then, looking forward 
to the time when nations will dispute on the ocean 
only in commercial activity, and man will cease to be 
the greatest enemy of man, he declares : " If Universal 
Peace could be more than the dream of good men, what 
event could accelerate it more than the independence of 
the two Americas ? " 3 Confessing that he does not ex- 
pect the applause of the present age, he concludes, " My 
heart tells me that I shall have the support of all free 
and sympathetic souls, and the suffrage of posterity." 4 
Most surely he has mine. Nothing can be happier than 
the thought that Universal Peace would be accelerated 
by American freedom, thus enhancing even this great 
boon. 

SIR WILLIAM JONES, 1781. 

I am glad to enter upon our list the name of this 
illustrious scholar, who was born in London, 28th Sep- 
tember, 1746, and died in India, 24th April, 1794. 

i Page 109. 3 p a cre 113. 

2 Page 115. 4 p a ge 112. 



SIR WILLIAM JONES, 1761. 135 

If others have excelled Sir William Jones in differ- 
ent departments of human activity, no Englishman has 
attained equal eminence in so many, and at the same 
time borne the priceless crown of character. His won- 
derful attainments and his various genius excite admi- 
ration, but his goodness awakens love. It is pleasant 
to know that his benediction rests upon our country. 

From boyhood to his last breath he was always in- 
dustrious, thus helping the generous gifts of nature, — 
and it is not easy to say where he was most eminent. 
As a jurist he is memorable for the " Essay on the Law 
of Bailments," undoubtedly at the time it appeared the 
most complete and beautiful contribution to the science 
of jurisprudence in the English language. As a judge, 
he was the voice of the law and of justice, so that his 
appointment to a high judicial station in India was 
called " the greatest blessing ever conferred by the Brit- 
ish Government on the inhabitants of the East." 1 As a 
linguist, knowing no less than twenty-eight languages, 
he was the predecessor of Sir William Humboldt and 
the less scholarly prodigy, Mezzofante, while as a phi- 
lologist he will find a parallel in the former rather than 
the latter. As an Orientalist, he was not only the first 
of his time, but the pioneer through whom the literature 
of the East was opened to European study and curiosity. 
As a poet, he is enshrined forever by his Ode, modestly 
called " in imitation of Alcaeus," 2 and doubtless inspired 
by sympathy with the American cause. 

" What constitutes a State? 
Not high-raised battlement on labored mound, 
Thick wall or moated gate; 
NO; men, high-minded men, 

1 Meadley's Memoirs of Paley, p. 221. 

2 Dated Abergavenny, March 31, 1781. 



136 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

Men, who their duties know 
But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain ; 

Prevent the long-aimed blow, 
And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain ; — 

These constitute a State." 

To all these accomplishments acid the glowing emo- 
tions of his noble nature, his love of virtue, his devo- 
tion to freedom, his sympathy for the poor and down- 
trodden. His biographer records as " a favorite opinion 
of Sir William Jones, that all men are born with an 
equal capacity for improvement" 1 and also reports him 
as saying, " I see clearly under the sun the two classes 
of men whom Solomon describes, the oppressor and the 

oppressed I shall cultivate my fields and think 

as little as possible of monarchs or oligarchs." 2 With 
these declarations it is easy to credit Dr. Paley, who 
said of him, " He was a great republican when I knew 
him." 3 Like seeks like, and a long intimacy in the 
family of the good Bishop of St. Asaph, ending in a 
happy marriage with his eldest daughter, shows how he 
must have sympathized with the American cause and 
with the future of our country. 

Our author had been the tutor of Lord Althorp, the 
same who, as Earl Spencer, became so famous a biblio- 
phile and a patron of Dibdin, and on the marriage of 
his pupil with Miss Lavinia Brigham, he was moved to 
commemorate it in a poem, entitled " The Muse Recalled ; 
an Ode on the Nuptials of Lord Viscount Althorp and 
Miss Lavinia Brigham, eldest Daughter of Charles Lord 
Lucon, March 6, 1781," which his critic, Wraxall, calls 
" one of the most beautiful lyric productions in the 

1 Teignmouth's Life of Sir William Jones, p. 406. 

2 Ibid., p. 365. 

3 Meadley's Memoirs of Paley, p. 221. 



Sill WILLIAM JONES, 1781. 137 

English language, emulating at once the fame of Mil- 
ton and of Gray." 1 But beyond the strain of personal 
sympathy, congenial to the occasion, was a passion for 
America, and the prophetic spirit which belongs to the 
poet. After lamenting that " freedom and concord re- 
pudiate the sons of Albion," all the virtues disappear. 

" Truth, Justice, Reason, Valor, with them fly, 
To seek a purer soil, a more congenial sky." 

But the soil and sky which they seek are of the 
Delaware : — 

" Beyond the vast Atlantic deep 

A dome by viewless genii shall be raised, 
The walls of adamant, compact and steep, 

The portals with sky-tinctured gems emblazed. 
There, on a lofty throne shall Virtue stand; 
To her the youth of Delaware shall kneel ; 
And when her smiles rain plenty o'er the land, 
Bow, tyrants, bow beneath the 'avenging steel.' 
Commerce icithjleets shall mock the waves, 
And arts that flourish not with slaves, 
Dancinfi with every Grace and Muse, 
Shall bid the valltys laugh and heavenly beams diffuse." 

Wraxall complains, 2 that here, in a fine frenzy of 
inspiration, the poet seems to behold, as in a vision, 
Washington and Congress exulting in the overthrow of 
all subjection to Great Britain, while George III. is 
pretty clearly designated in the apostrophe to tyrants. 
But to an American the most captivating verses are 
those which open the vista of peaceful triumphs where 
commerce and the arts unite with every Grace and 
every Muse. 

Kindred in sentiment were other contemporary verses 
by the anonymous author of the " Heroic Epistle to Sir 

1 Historical Memoirs of his own Time, Vol. II. p. 378, March, 1781 
(ed. London, 1836). 
* Ibid., p. 379. 



138 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

William Chambers," now understood to be the poet 
Mason, 1 which Wraxall praises for their beauty, but 
condemns for their politics. 2 After describing the cor- 
ruption of the House of Commons under Lord North, 
the poet declares that it will augment in enormity and 
profligacy, — 

" Till, mocked and jaded with the puppet play, 
Old England's genius turns with scorn away, 
Ascends his sacred bark, the sails unfurl'd, 
And steers his State to the wide Western World. 
High on the helm majestic Freedom stands, 
In act of cold contempt she waves her hands; 
Take, slaves, she cries, the realms that I disown, 
Renounce your birthright and destroy my throne! " 

The two poets united in a common cause. One trans- 
ported to the other side of the Atlantic the virtues 
which had been the glory of Britain, and the other car- 
ried there nothing less than the sovereign genius of the 
great nation itself. 

COUNT ARANDA, 1783. 

The Count Aranda was one of the first of Spanish 
statesmen and diplomatists, and one of the richest sub- 
jects of Spain in his day; born at Saragossa, 1718, and 
died 1799. He, too, is one of our prophets. Originally 
a soldier, he became ambassador, governor of a province, 
and prime minister. In the latter post he displayed 
character as well as ability, and was the benefactor of 
his country. He drove the Jesuits from Spain and 
dared to oppose the Inquisition. He was a philoso- 
pher, and, like Pope Benedict XIV., corresponded with 
Voltaire. Such a liberal spirit was out of place in 

1 Walpole's Last Joiirnals, Vol. I. p. 187, March, 1773. 

2 Historical Memoirs, Vol. II. p. 77, March, 1781. 



COUNT ARANDA, 1783. 139 

Spain. Compelled to resign in 1773, he found a retreat 
at Paris as ambassador, where he came into communi- 
cation with Franklin, Adams, and Jay, and finally 
signed the Treaty of Paris, by which Spain acknowl- 
edged our independence. Shortly afterwards he re- 
turned to Spain and took the place of Florida Blanca 
as prime minister. He was emphatically a statesman, 
and as such did not hesitate to take responsibility even 
contrary to express orders. An instance of this civic 
courage was when, for the sake of peace between Spain 
and England, he accepted the Floridas instead of Gib- 
raltar, on which the eminent French publicist, M. Pay- 
neval, remarks that " history furnishes few examples 
of such a character and such loyalty." 1 

Franklin, on meeting him, records, in his letter to 
the secret committee of Congress, that he seemed " well 
disposed to us." 2 Shortly afterwards he had another 
interview with him, which he thus chronicles in his 
journal: — 

" Saturday, June 29th [1782]. — We went together to the 
Spanish Ambassador's, who received us with great civility 
and politeness. He spoke with Mr. Jay on the subject of 

the treaty they were to make together On our going 

out, he took pains himself to open the folding-doors for us, 
which is a high compliment here, and told us he would re- 
turn our visit (rendre so?i devoir), and then fix a day with us 
for dining with him.'' 3 

Adams, in his journal, describes a Sunday dinner at 
his house, then a " new building in the finest situation 
of Paris," 4 being part of the incomparable palace, with 

1 Institutions du Droit de la Nature et des Gens, Tom. II. p. 311. 

2 Works, Vol. VIII. p. 194. 

3 Works, Vol. IX. p. 350. 

4 Works, Vol. III. p. 379. 



140 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

its columnar front, still admired as it looks on the Place 
de la Concorde. Jay also describes a dinner with the 
Count, who was "living in great splendor, with an assort- 
ment of wines the finest in Europe," and was " the ablest 
Spaniard he had ever known "; showing by his conversa- 
tion " that his court is in earnest," and appearing " frank 
and candid, as well as sagacious." 1 These hospitalities 
have a peculiar interest, when it is known, as it now is, 
that Count Aranda regarded the acknowledgment of our 
independence with " grief and dread." But these senti- 
ments were disguised from our ministers. 

After signing the Treaty of Paris, by which Spain 
acknowledged our independence, Aranda addressed a 
memoir secretly to King Charles III., in which his 
opinions on this event are set forth. This prophetic 
document slumbered for a long time in the confidential 
archives of the Spanish crown. Coxe, in his " Memoirs 
of the House of Bourbon in Spain," which are founded 
on a rare collection of original documents, makes no 
allusion to it. The memoir appears for the first time 
in a volume published at Paris in 1837, and entitled 
" Gouverncmcnt de Charles III., Roi cVEspagne, on In- 
struction rescrvee d la Junte d'Etat par ce Monarque. 
Tublie par D. Andr4 Muriel." The editor had translated 
into French the Memoirs of Coxe, and was probably led 
by this labor to make the supplementary collection. An 
abstract of the memoir of Aranda appears in one of the 
historical dissertations of the Mexican authority, Ala- 
man, who said of it that it has " a just celebrity, because 
results have made it pass for a prophecy." 2 I translate 
it now from the French of Muriel. 

1 William Jay, Life of John Jay, Vol. T. p. 140 ; Vol. II. p. 101. 

2 Dissertaciones sobre la Historia de la Republica Megicana, Tom. III. pp. 
351, 352. 



COUNT ARANDA, 1783. 141 

"Memoir communicated secretly to the King by his Excellency 
the Count Aranda, on the Independence of the English 
Colonies, after having signed the Treaty of Paris of 1783. 

" The independence of the English colonies has been 
acknowledged. This is for me an occasion of grief and 
dread. France has few possessions in America ; but she 
should have considered that Spain, her intimate ally, has 
many, and that she is left to-day exposed to terrible shocks. 
From the beginning, France has acted contrary to her true 
interests in encouraging and seconding this independence ; I 
have so declared often to the ministers of this nation. What 
could happen better for France than to see the English and 
the colonists destroy each other in a party warfare which 
could only augment her power and favor her interests 1 The 
antipathy which reigns between France and England blinded 
the French Cabinet ; it forgot that its interest consisted in 
remaining a tranquil spectator of this conflict ; and, once 
launched in the arena, it dragged us unhappily, and by vir- 
tue of the family compact, into a war entirely contrary to our 
proper interest. 

" I will not stop here to examine the opinions of some 
statesmen, our own countrymen as well as foreigners, which 
I share, on the difficulty of preserving our power in America. 
Never have so extensive possessions, placed at a great distance 
from the metropolis, been long preserved. To this cause, appli- 
cable to all colonies, must be added others peculiar to the 
Spanish possessions ; namely, the difficulty of succoring them 
in case of need ; the vexations to which the unhappy inhab- 
itants have been exposed from some of the governors ; the 
distance of the supreme authority to which they must have 
recourse for the redress of grievances, which causes years to 
pass before justice is done to their complaints; the vengeance 
of the local authorities to which they continue exposed while 
waiting ; the difficulty of knowing the truth at so great a dis- 



142 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

tance ; finally, the means which the viceroys and governors, 
from being Spaniards, cannot fail to . have for obtaining 
favorable judgments in Spain; all these different circum- 
stances will render the inhabitants of America discontented, 
and make them attempt efforts to obtain independence as 
soon as they shall have a propitious occasion. 

" Without entering into any of these considerations, I shall 
confine myself now to that which occupies us from the dread 
of seeing ourselves exposed to dangers from the new power 
which we have just recognized in a country where there is no 
other in condition to arrest its progress. This Federal Re- 
ptiblic is born a pygmy, so to speak. It required the sup- 
port and the forces of two powers as great as Spain and 
France in order to attain independence. A day will come 
when it will be a giant, even a colossus formidable in these 
countries. It will then forget the benefits which it has re- 
ceived from the two powers, and will dream of nothing but 
to organize itself. Liberty of conscience, the facility for estab- 
lishing a new population on immense lands, as ivell as the ad- 
vantages of the new government, will draw thither agricidturists 
and artisans from all the nations; for men always run after 
fortune. And in a few years ice shall see with true grief the 
tyrannical existence of this same colossus of which I speak. 

'' The first movement of this power, when it has arrived 
at its aggrandizement, will be to obtain possession of the 
Floridas, in order to dominate the Gulf of Mexico. After 
having rendered commerce with New Spain difficult for us, 
it Mill aspire to the conquest of this vast empire, which it 
will not be possible for us to defend against a formidable 
power established on the same continent, and in its neigh- 
borhood. These fears are well founded, Sire ; they will be 
changed into reality in a few years, if, indeed, there are not 
other disorders in our Americas still more fatal. This obser- 
vation is justified by what has happened in all ages, and with 
all nations which have begun to rise. Man is the same every- 



COUNT AKANDA, 1783. 143 

where ; the difference of climate does not change the nature 
of our sentiments ; he who finds the opportunity of acquiring 
power and of aggrandizing himself, profits by it always. How 
then can we expect the Americans to respect the kingdom of 
New Spain, when they shall have the facility of possessing 
themselves of this rich and beautiful country 1 A wise policy 
counsels us to take precautions against evils which may hap- 
pen. This thought has occupied my whole mind, since, as 
Minister Plenipotentiary of your Majesty, and conformably 
to your royal will and instructions, I signed the Peace of 
Paris. I have considered this important affair with all the 
attention of which I am capable, and after much reflection 
drawn from the knowledge, military as well as political, 
which I have been able to acquire in my long career, I think 
that, in order to escape the great losses with which we are 
threatened, there remains nothing but the means which I am 
about to have the honor of exhibiting to your Majesty. 

" Your Majesty must relieve yourself of all your posses- 
sions on the continent of the two Americas, preserving only 
the islands of Cuba and Porto Rico in the northern part, and 
some other convenient one in the southern part, to serve as 
a seaport or trading-place for Spanish commerce. 

" In order to accomplish this great thought in a manner 
becoming to Spain, three infants must be placed in America, 
— one as king of Mexico, another as king of Peru, and the 
third as king of the Terra Firma. Your Majesty will take 
the title of Emperor." 

I have sometimes heard this remarkable memoir 
called apocryphal, but without reason, except because 
its foresight is so remarkable. The Mexican historian 
Alaman treats it as genuine, and, after praising it, in- 
forms us that the proposition of Count Aranda to the 
king was not taken into consideration, which, according 
to him, was " disastrous to all, and especially to the peo- 



144 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

pie of America, who in this way would have obtained 
independence without struggle or anarchy. 1 Mean- 
while all the American possessions of the Spanish 
crown, except Cuba and Porto Rico, have become inde- 
pendent, as predicted, and the new power, known as 
the United States, which at that time was a " pygmy," is 
a "colossus." 

In proposing a throne for Spanish America, Aranda 
was preceded by no less a person than the great French 
engineer and fort-builder, Marshal Vauban, who, during 
the reverses of the war of the Spanish Succession, sub- 
mitted to the court of France that Philip the Fifth 
should be sent to reign in America, and the king is said 
to have consented. 2 

Aranda was not alone in surprise at the course of 
Spain. The English traveller Burnaby, in his edition 
of 1796, mentions this as one of the reasons for the 
success of the Colonists, and declares that he had not 
.supposed, originally, "that- Spain would join in a plan 
inevitably leading by slow and imperceptible steps to 
the final loss of all her rich possessions in America," 3 
This was not an uncommon idea. The same anxieties 
appeared in one of Mr. Adams's Dutch correspondents, 
whose report of fearful prophecies has been already 
mentioned. 4 John Adams also records in his diary, un- 
der date of 14th December, 1779, on landing at Ferrol 
in Spain, that, according to the report of various per- 
sons, " the Spanish nation in general have been of opin- 
ion that the Revolution in America was of bad example 

1 Alaman, Di^ertac'iones. Tom. III. p 333. 

2 Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XIV., Chap. XXI. : (Euvres, Tom. XXIII. p. 
336 (cd. 1785). 

3 Travels in North America, Preface, p. 10. 

4 Ante, pp. 56-58. 



WILLIAM PALEY, 4 1785. 145 

to the Spanish colonies, and dangerous to the interests 
of Spain, as the United States, should they become am- 
bitious, and be seized with the spirit of conquest, might 
aim at Mexico and Peru." 1 All this is entirely in har- 
mony with the memoir of the Spanish statesman. 

WILLIAM PALEY, 1785. . 

With the success of the American Eevolution pro- 
phecy entered other spheres, and here we welcome a 
remarkable writer, the Rev. William Paley, an English 
divine, who was born July, 1743, and died 25th May, 
1805. He is known for various works of great contem- 
porary repute, all commended by a style of singular 
transparency and admirably adapted to the level of 
opinion at the time. If they are gradually vanishing 
from sight, it is because other works, especially in phi- 
losophy, are more satisfactory and touch higher chords. 

His earliest considerable work, and for a long period 
a popular text-book of education, was the well-known 
" Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy," which 
first appeared in 1785. Here, with grave errors and a 
reprehensible laxity on certain topics, he did much for 
truth. The clear vision with which he saw the enor- 
mity of slavery was not disturbed by any prevailing 
interest at home, and he constantly testified against it. 
American Independence furnished occasion for a pro- 
phetic aspiration of more than common value, because 
embodied in a work of morals especially for the young. 

" The great revolution which has taken place in the West- 
ern World may probably conduce (and who knows but that 
it was designed 1) to accelerate the fall of this abominable 

1 Works, Vol. III. p 234. 



146 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

tyranny ; and now that this contest, and the passions which 
attend it, are no more, there may succeed perhaps a season for 
reflecting, whether a legislature, which had so long lent its 
assistance to the support of an institution replete with human 
misery, was fit to be trusted with an empire the most exten- 
sive that ever obtained in any age or quarter of the world." 1 

In thus associating Emancipation with American In- 
dependence, the philosopher became an unconscious 
associate of Lafayette, who, on the consummation of 
peace, invited Washington to this beneficent enterprise, 
alas ! in vain. 2 

Paley did not confine his testimony to the pages of 
philosophy, but openly united with the Abolitionists of 
the day. To help the movement against the slave-trade, 
he encountered the claim of pecuniary compensation for 
the partakers in the traffic, by a brief essay, in 1789, 
entitled " Arguments against the unjust Pretensions of 
Slave Dealers and Holders to be indemnified by pecuni- 
ary Allowances at the public Expense, in Case the 
Slave-Trade should be abolished." 3 This was sent to 
the Abolition Committee, by whom the substance was 
presented to the public ; but unhappily the essay was 
lost or mislaid. 

His honorable interest in the cause was attested by a 
speech at a public meeting of the inhabitants of Carlisle, 
over which he presided, 9th February, 1792. Here he 
denounced the slave-trade as that "diabolical traffic," 
and by a plain similitude, as applicable to slavery as to 
the trade in slaves, held it up to judgment : — 

i Moral and Political Philosophy, Book III. Part 2, Chap. 3: " Slavery." 

2 Correspondence of the American Revolution: Letters to Washington 
(ed. Sparks), Vol. III. p. 547. 

3 Meadley, Memoirs of Paley, p. 151. 



BURNS, 1788. 147 

" None will surely plead in favor of scalping. But sup- 
pose scalps should become of request in Europe, and a trade 
in them be carried on with the American Indians, might it 
not be justly said that the Europeans, by their trade in 
scalps, did all they could to perpetuate among the natives 
of America the inhuman practice of scalping ] " 1 

Strange that the philosopher who extenuated duelling 
should have been so true and lofty against slavery. 
For this at least he deserves our grateful praise. 

BURNS, 17S8. 

From Count Aranda to Eobert Burns, — from the 
rich and titled minister, faring sumptuously in the best 
house of Paris, to the poor ploughboy poet, struggling 
in a cottage, — what a contrast ! And there is contrast 
also between him and the philosopher nestling in the 
English Church. Of the poet I say nothing, except that 
he was born 25th January, 1759, and died 21st July, 
1796, in the thirty-seventh year of his age. 

There is only a slender thread of Burns to be woven 
into this web, and yet, coming from him, it must not be 
neglected. In a letter dated 8th November, 1788, after 
a friendly word for the unfortunate house of Stuart, he 
prophetically alludes to American independence : — 

" I will not, I cannot, enter into the_ merits of the cause, 
but I dare say the American Congress, in 1776, will be 
allowed to be as able and as enlightened as the English Con- 
vention was in 1688 ; and that their posterity ivill celebrate the 
centenary of their deliverance from us, as duly and sincerely as 
we do ours from the oppressive measures of the house of Stuart." ' 2 

1 Meadley, Memoirs of Paley, p. 383. Appendix G. 

2 Currie, Life and Works of Burns, p. 266. Grahame, History of United 
States, Vol. IV. p. 462. 



148 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

The year 1788, when these words were written, was a 
year of commemoration, being the hundredth from the 
famous revolution by which the Stuarts were excluded 
from the throne of England. The " centenary " of our 
independence is not yet completed ; but long ago the 
commemoration began. On the coming of that hun- 
dredth anniversary, the prophecy of Burns will be more 
than fulfilled. 

This aspiration is in harmony with the address to 
George III. in the " Dream," after the loss of the 
Colonies : — 

" Your i - oyal nest, beneath your wing, 
Is e'en right reft and clouted " ; — 

meaning broken and patched ; also with the obnoxious 
toast he gave at a supper, " May our success in the 
present war be equal to the justice of our cause " ; 1 
and also with the "Ode on the American War," 2 be- 
ginning, — 

" No Spartan tube, no Attic shell, 
No lyre Eolian, I awake; 
'T is Liberty's bold note I swell; 
Thy harp, Columbia, let me take." 

How natural for the great poet, who had pictured the 
sublime brotherhood of man : — 

" Then let us pray, that come it may, 
And come it will, for a' that, 
That man to man, the wide world o'er, 
Shall brothers be and a' that. 3 

1 The MS. of a letter from Burns, mentioning the incident, is preserved 
by Stevens in his Bibliotheca Geographica, Part I. p. 58 (1872). 

2 Ibid., p. 57. 

3 BtSranger reproduced the same life-giving cosmopolitan sentiment: — 

" Peuples, formez une sainte alliance, 
Et donnez-vous la main." 



RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN, 1794. 149 

RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN, 1794. 

Sheridan was a genius, who united the palm of elo- 
quence in Parliament with that other palm won at the 
theatre. His speeches and his plays excited equal ap- 
plause. The House of Commons and Drury Lane were 
the scenes of his famous labors, while society enjoyed 
his graceful wit. He was born in Dublin, September, 
1751, and died in London, July 7th, 1816. 

I quote now from a speech in the House of Com- 
mons, 21st January, 1794. 

" America remains neutral, prosperous, and at peace ! 
America, with a wisdom, prudence, and magnanimity which 
we have disdained, thrives at this moment in a state of 
envied tranquillity, and is hourly clearing the paths of un- 
bounded opulence. America has monopolized the commerce 
and the advantages which we have abandoned.' 0, turn 
your eyes to her ; view her situation, her happiness, her 
content ; observe her trade and her manufactures adding 
daily to her general credit, to her private enjoyments, and 
to her public resources, her name and government rising above 
the nations of Europe with a simple but commanding dignity, 
that ivins at once the respect, the confidence, and the affection 
of the world." 1 

Here is true respect and sympathy for our country, 
with a forecast of increasing prosperity, and an image of 
her attitude among the nations. It is pleasant to enroll 
the admired author of " The Eivals " and " The School 
for Scandal " in this catalogue. 

i Hansard, Parliamentary History, Vol. XXX. pp. 1219, 1220. 



150 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 



FOX, 1794. 

In quoting from Charles James Fox, the statesman, 
minister, and orator, I need add nothing, except that he 
was born 24th January, 1749, and died 13th September, 
1806, and that he was an early friend of our country. 

Many words of his, especially during our Eevolution, 
might be introduced here ; but I content myself with a 
single passage of later date, which, besides its expression 
of good-will, is a prophecy of our power. It is found in 
a speech on his motion for putting an end to war with 
France in the House of Commons, 30th May, 1794. 

" It was impossible to dissemble that we had a serious dis- 
pute with America, and although we might be confident 
that the wisest and best man of his age, who presided in the 
government of that country, would do everything that be- 
came him to avert a war, it was impossible to foresee the 
issue. America had no fleet, no army ; but in case of war 
she would find various means to harass and annoy us. 
Against her we could not strike a blow that would not be 
as severely felt in London as in America, so identified were 
the two countries by commercial intercourse. To a contest 
with such an adversary he looked as the greatest possible mis- 
fortune. If we commenced another crusade against her, we 
might destroy her trade, and check the progress of her agri- 
culture, but we must also equally injure ourselves. Des- 
perate, therefore, indeed, must be that war in which each 
wound inflicted on our enemy would at the same time inflict 
one upon ourselves. He hoped to God that such an event 
as a war with America would not happen." * 

All good men on both sides of the ocean must join 
with Fox, who thus early deprecated war between the 

l Parliamentary History, Vol. XXXI. p. 627. 



THE ABBE" GREGOTRE, 1808. 151 

United States and England, and portrayed the fearful 
consequences. Time, which has enlarged and multi- 
plied the relations between the two countries, makes 
his words more applicable now than when first uttered. 

THE ABBE GREGOIRE, 1808. 

Henri Gr^goire, of France, Curate, Deputy to the 
States General, Constitutional Bishop, Member of the 
Convention, also of the Council of Five Hundred, and 
Senator, sometimes called Bishop, more frequently Abbe, 
was born 4th December, 1750, and died 28th April, 1831. 
To these titles add Abolitionist and Republican. 

His character and career were unique, being in France 
what Clarkson and Wilberforce were in England, and 
much more, for he was not only an Abolitionist. In 
all history no hero of humanity stands forth more con- 
spicuous for instinctive sympathy with the Rights of 
Man and constancy in their support. As early as 1788 
he signalized himself by an essay, crowned by the 
Academy of Metz, upholding tolerance for the Jews. 1 
His public life began while yet a curate, as a representa- 
tive of the clergy of Lorraine in the States General, 
but his sympathies with the people were at once mani- 
fest. In the engraving by which the oath in the tennis 
court is commemorated he appears in the foreground. 
His votes were always for the enfranchisement of the 
people and the improvement of their condition, his 
hope being "to Christianize the Revolution." In the 
night session of 4th August, 1789, he declared for the 
abolition of privileges. He was the first to give adhe- 
sion to the civil constitution of the clergy, and himself 

1 Essai sur la Regeneration physique et morale des Juifs. 



152 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

became a constitutional bishop. The decree abolishing 
royalty was drawn by him, and he avows that for many 
days thereafter the excess of joy took from him appetite 
and sleep. In the discussion on the execution of the 
king he called for the suppression of the punishment 
of death. At his instance the convention abolished 
African slavery. With similar energy lie sustained 
public libraries, botanical gardens, and experimental 
farms. He was a founder of the Bureau of Longitudes, 
the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, and of the National 
Institute. More than any person he contributed to pre- 
vent the destruction of public monuments, and was the 
first to call this crime " vandalism," — an excellent term, 
since adopted in all European languages. With similar 
vigor he said, in words often quoted, " Kings are in the 
moral ordek what monsters are in the physical order " ; 
and, " The history of kings is the martyrology of the 
people." He denounced " the oligarchs of all countries 
and all the crowned brigands who pressed down the 
people," and, according to his own boast, " spat upon " 
duellists. " Better a loss to deplore than an injustice 
to reproach ourselves with," was his lofty solace as he 
turned from the warning that the Colonies might be 
endangered by the rights he demanded. 

Such a man could not reconcile himself to the Em- 
pire or to Napoleon ; nor could he expect consideration 
under the Eestoration. But he was constant always to 
his original sentiments. In 1826 he wrote a work with 
the expressive title, " The Nobility of the Skin, or the 
Prejudice of Whites against the Color of Africans and 
that of their black and mixed Descendants." * His life 

1 De la noblesse de la pean ou du prejuge des blancs contre la couleur 
des Africains et eelle de leurs descendants noir et sang-mele\ 



THE ABBE GKEGOIRE, 1§08. 153 

was prolonged to witness the Revolution of 1830, and 
shortly after his remains were borne to the cemetery 
of Mont Parnasse by young men, who took the horses 
from the hearse. 1 

This brief account of one little known is an introduc- 
tion to signal prophecies concerning America. 

As early as 8th June, 1791, in a document addressed 
to citizens of color and free negroes of the French 
islands, 2 he boldly said : — 

"A day will come when deputies of color will traverse 
the ocean to come and sit in the national diet and to swear 
with us to live and die under our laws. A day will come 
when the sun will not shine among you except upon free- 
men, — when the rays of the light-spreading orb will no 

longer fall upon irons and slaves It is according to 

the irresistible march of events and the progress of intelli- 
gence, that all people dispossessed of the domain of liberty 
will at last recover this indefeasible property." 3 

These strong and confident words, so early in date, 
were followed by others more remarkable. At the con- 
clusion of his admirable work Dc la Literature des 
Negrcs, first published in 1808, where, witli equal knowl- 
edge and feeling, homage is done to a people wronged 
and degraded by man, he cites his prediction with re- 
gard to the sun shining only upon freemen, and then, 
elevated by the vision, declares that " the American 
Continent, asylum of liberty, is moving towards an 
order of things which will be common to the Antilles, 
and the course of which all the powers combined cannot 

1 The leading events of his life will be found in the two French biograph- 
ical dictionaries, where his name occupies considerable space. 

2 Lettre aux citoyens de couleur et negres libres de Saint Domingue, et 
des autres isles Francaises de l'Amerique. 

3 Page 12. 

7* 



154 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

arrest!' 1 This vigorous language is crowned by a 
prophecy of singular extent and precision, when, after 
dwelling on the influences at work to accelerate pro- 
gress, he foretells the eminence of our country : — 

" When an energetic and powerful nation, to which every- 
thing presages high destinies, stretching its arms upon the 
two oceans, Atlantic and Pacific, shall direct its vessels from 
one to the other by an abridged route, — it may be in cutting 
the isthmus of Panama ; it may be in forming a canal com- 
municating, as has been proposed, by the river St. John and 
the lake of Nicaragua, — it ivill change the face of the commer- 
cial world and the face of empires. Who knows if America 
will not then avenge the outrages she has received, and if 
our old Europe, placed in the rank of a subaltern power, will 
not become a colony of the New World 1 " 2 

Thus resting on the two oceans with a canal between, 
so that the early " secret of the strait " shall no longer 
exist, the American Eepublic will change the face of 
the world, and perhaps make Europe subaltern. Such 
was the vision of the French Abolitionist, lifted by 
devotion to Humanity. 

THOMAS JEFFERSON, 1824. 

Small preface is needed for the testimony of Jeffer- 
son, whose life belongs to the history of his country. 
He was born 2d April, 1743, and died 4th July, 1826. 

Contemporary and rival of Adams, the author of the 
Declaration of Independence surpassed the other in 
sympathetic comprehension of the Eights of Man, as 
the other surpassed him in the prophetic spirit. Jef- 
ferson's words picturing slavery were unequalled in the 

i Pasre 282. 2 Page 283. 



THOMAS JEFFERSON, 1824. 155 

prolonged discussion of that terrible subject, and Ids 
two Inaugural Addresses are masterpieces of political 
truth. But with clearer eye Adams foresaw the future 
grandeur of the Eepublic, and dwelt on its ravishing 
light and glory. The vision of our country, coextensive 
and coincident with the North American Continent, was 
never beheld by Jefferson. While recognizing that our 
principles of government, traversing the Rocky Moun- 
tains, would smite upon the Pacific coast, his sight did 
not embrace the distant communities there as parts of a 
common country. This is apparent in a letter to John 
Jacob Astor, 24th March, 1812, where, referring to the 
commencement of a settlement by the latter on Colum- 
bia Eiver, and declaring the gratification with which he 
looked forward to the time when its descendants should 
have spread through the whole length of that coast, he 
adds, " covering it with free and independent Ameri- 
cans, unconnected with us but by the ties of blood and 
interest, and employing like us the rights of self-govern- 
ment." J In another letter to Mr. Astor, 9th Novem- 
ber, 1813, he characterizes the settlement as "the germ 
of a great, free, and independent empire on that side of 
our continent" 2 thus carefully announcing political dis- 
sociation. 

But Jefferson has not been alone in blindness to the 
mighty capabilities of the Eepublic, inspired by his own 
Declaration of Independence. Daniel Webster, in a 
speech at Faneuil Hall, as late as 7th November, 1848, 
pronounced that the Pacific coast could not be gov- 
erned from Europe or from the Atlantic side of the 
Continent ; and he pressed the absurdity of anything 
different : — 

1 Jefferson, Writings, Vol. VI. p. 55. 2 ibid., p. 248. 



156 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

" And now let me ask if there be any sensible man in the 
whole United States, who will say for a moment, that, when 
fifty or a hundred thousand persons of this description 
[Americans mainly, but all Anglo-Saxons] shall find them- 
selves on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, they will long 
consent to be under the rules of the American Congress or 
the British Parliament. They will raise the standard for 
themselves, and they ought to do it." l 

Sucli a precise and strenuous protest from such a 
quarter mitigates the distrust of Jefferson. But after 
the acquisition of California the orator said, " I willingly 
admit that my apprehensions have not been realized."" 2 

On the permanence of the National Union, and its 
influence throughout the world, Jefferson prophesied 
thus, in a letter to Lafayette, 14th February, 1815 : — 

" The cement of this Union is in the heart-blood of every 
American. I do not believe there is on earth a government 
established on so immovable a basis. Let them in any 
State, even in Massachusetts itself, raise the standard of sep- 
aration, and its citizens will rise in mass and do justice to 
themselves on their own incendiaries." 3 

Unhappily the Piebellion shows that he counted too 
much on the patriotism of the States against " their 
own incendiaries." In the same hopeful spirit, he wrote 
to Edward Livingston, the eminent jurist, 4th April, 
1824: — 

" You have many years yet to come of vigorous activity, 
and I confidently trust they will be employed in cherishing 

1 Boston Daily Advertiser, 9th November, 1848. This speech is not found 
in the collected works of Mr. Webster. 

2 Speech at Pilgrim Festival, New York, 1850: Works, Vol. II. p. 526. 

3 Writings, Vol. VI. p. 426. 



GEORGE CANNING, 1826. 157 

every measure which may foster our brotherly union and 
perpetuate a constitution of government destined to be the 
'primitive and precious model of what is to change the condition 
of man over the globe." 1 

In these lajbter words he takes his place on the plat- 
form of John Adams, and sees the world changed by 
our example. But again he is anxious about the Union. 
In another letter to Livingston, 25th March, 1825, after 
saying of the National Constitution, that " it is a com- 
pact of many independent powers, every single one of 
which claims an equal right to understand it and to re- 
quire its observance," he prophesies : — 

" However strong the cord of compact may be, there is a 
point of tension at which it will break." 2 

Thus, in venerable years, wdiile watching with anxi- 
ety the fortunes of the Union, the patriarch did not fail 
to see the new order of ages instituted by the American 
Government. 

GEORGE CANNING, 1826. 

George Canning was a successor of Fox, in the 
House of Commons, as statesman, minister, and orator ; 
he was born 11th April, 1770, and died 8th August, 
1827, in the beautiful villa of the Duke of Devonshire, 
at Chiswick, where Fox had died before. Unlike Fox 
in sentiment for our country, he is nevertheless associ- 
ated with a leading event of our history, and is the 
author of prophetic w T ords. 

The Monroe Doctrine, as now familiarly called, pro- 
ceeded from Canning. He was its inventor, promoter, 

1 Writings, Vol. VII. p. 344. 2 Ibid., p. 404. 



158 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

and champion, at least so far as it bears against Euro- 
pean intervention in American affairs. Earnestly en- 
gaged in counteracting the designs of the Holy Alliance 
for the restoration of the Spanish colonies to Spain, he 
sought to enlist the United States in the same policy ; 
and when Mr. Bush, our Minister at London, replied 
that any interference with European politics was con- 
trary to the traditions of the American Government, he 
argued that, however just such a policy might have 
been formerly, it was no longer applicable, — that the 
question was new and complicated, — that it was " full 
as much American as European, to say no more," — 
that it concerned the United States under aspects and 
interests as immediate and commanding as those of any 
of the states of Europe, — that " they were the first 
power on that continent, and confessedly the leading 
power " ; and he then asked, " Was it possible that they 
could see with indifference their fate decided upon by 
Europe ? Had not a new epoch arrived in the relative 
position of the United States toward Europe, which 
Europe must acknowledge? Were the great political 
ancl commercial interests, which hung upon the destinies 
of the new continent to be canvassed and adjusted in 
this hemisphere, without the co-operation, or even the 
knowledge, of the United States ? " With mingled 
ardor and importunity the British Minister pressed his 
case. At last, after much discussion in the Cabinet at 
Washington, President Monroe, accepting the lead of 
Mr. Canning and with the counsel of John Quincy 
Adams, put forth his famous declaration, where, after 
referring to the radical difference between the political 
systems of Europe and America, he says, that " we 
should consider any attempt on their part to extend 



GEORGE CANNING, 1S2G. 159 

their systems to any portion of this hemisphere as 
dangerous to our peace and safety" and that, where 
governments have been recognized by us as indepen- 
dent, " we could not view any interposition for the pur- 
pose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other 
manner their destiny, by any European power, in any 
other light than as a manifestation of an unfriendly 
disposition tovmrd the United States." 1 

The message of President Monroe was received in 
England with enthusiastic congratulations. It was upon 
all tongues ; the press Was full of it ; the securities of 
Spanish America rose in the market ; the agents of 
Spanish America were happy. 2 Brougham exclaimed, 
in Parliament, that " no event had ever dispersed greater 
joy, exultation, and gratitude over all the freemen of 
Europe." Mackintosh rejoiced in the coincidence of 
England and the United States, "the two great com- 
monwealths, for so he delighted to call them ; and he 
heartily prayed that they may be forever united in the 
cause of justice and liberty." 3 The Holy Alliance 
abandoned their purposes on this continent, and the 
independence of Spanish America was established. 
Some time afterwards, on the occasion of assistance 
to Portugal, when Mr. Canning felt called to review 
and vindicate his foreign policy, he assumed the fol- 
lowing lofty strain. This was in the House of Com- 
mons, 12th December, 1826: — 

"It would be disingenuous not to admit that the entry 
of the French army into Spain was, in a certain sense, a 

1 Annual Message to Congress of 2d December, 1823. 

2 Rush, Memoranda of Residence at London, Vol. II. p. 458; Wheaton, 
Elements of International Law, pp. 97-112, Dana's note. 

3 Stapleton, Life of Canning, Vol. II. pp. 46, 47. 



160 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

disparagement, an affront to onr pride, a blow to the 
feelings of England. But I deny that, questionable or cen- 
surable as the act may be, it was one that necessarily called 
for our direct and hostile opposition. Was nothing then 
to be done ] If France occupied Spain, was it necessary, 
in order to avoid the consequences of that occupation, that 
we should blockade Cadiz] No. I looked another way. 
I sought materials for compensation in another hemisphere. 
Contemplating Spain, such as our ancestors had known her, 
I resolved that, if France had Spain, it should not be Spain 
' with the Indies.' / called the New World into existence to 
redress the balance of the Old." 1 

If the republics of Spanish America, thus summoned 
into independent existence, have not contributed the 
weight thus vaunted, the growing power of the United 
States is ample to compensate deficiencies on this conti- 
nent. There is no balance of power it cannot redress. 

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, 1835. 

With De Tocqueville we come among contemporaries 
removed by death. He was born at Paris, 29th July, 
1805, and died at Cannes, 16th April, 1859. Having 
known him personally and seen him at his castle-home 
in Normandy, I cannot fail to recognize the man in his 
writings, which on this account have a double charm. 

He was the younger son of noble parents, his father 
being of ancient Norman descent and his mother grand- 
daughter of Malesherbes, the venerated defender of 
Louis XVI. ; but his aristocratic birth had no influence 
to check the generous sympathies with which his heart 
always palpitated. In 1831 he came to America as a 

i Canning, Speeches, Vol. VI. pp. 10S, 109. 



ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, 1835. 161 

commissioner from the French Government to examine 
our prisons, but with a larger commission from his own 
soul to study republican institutions. His conscien- 
tious application, rare probity, penetrating thought, and 
refinement of style all appeared in his work, De la 
Democratic en Ame'rique, first published in 1835, whose 
peculiar success is marked by the fourteenth French 
edition now before me, and the translations into other 
languages. At once he was famous and his work 
classical. The Academy opened its gates. Since Mon- 
tesquieu there had been no equal success in the same 
department, and he was constantly likened to the illus- 
trious author of "The Spirit of Laws." Less epigram- 
matic, less artful, and less French than his prototype, 
he was more simple, truthful, and prophetic. A second 
publication in 1840 with the same title, the fruit of 
mature studies, presented American institutions in an- 
other aspect, exhibiting his unimpaired faith in Democ- 
racy, which with him was Equality as " first principle 
and symbol." 1 

Entering the French Chambers, he became eminent for 
character, discussing chiefly those measures in which 
civilization is most concerned, — the reform of prisons, 
the abolition of slavery, penal colonies, and the preten- 
sions of socialism. His work, L'Ancien Regime et la 
Revolution, awakens admiration, while his correspond- 
ence is among the most charming in literature, excit- 
ing love as well as delight. 

His honest and practical insight made him philoso- 
pher and prophet, which he was always. A speech in 
the Chambers, 27th January, 1848, was memorable as 
predicting the Eevolution which occurred two months 

i Vol. III. Chap. VII. p. 527. 



162 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

later. But his foresight with regard to America brings 
him into our procession. 

His clearness of vision appears in the distinctness 
with which he recognized the peril from slavery and 
from the pretensions of the States. And in slavery- 
he saw also the prolonged and diversified indignity to 
the African race. This was his statement : — 

" The most fearful of all the evils which menace the fu- 
ture of the United States springs from the presence of the 
blacks on their soil. When we seek the cause of present 
embarrassments and of future dangers to the United 
States, we arrive almost always at this first fact, from 
whatever point we depart." 1 

Then with consummate power he depicts the lot of the 
unhappy African even when free, — oppressed, but with 
whites for judges ; shut out from the jury ; his son ex- 
cluded from the school which receives the descendant of 
the European ; unable with gold to buy a place at the 
theatre "by the side of him who was his master"; in 
hospitals separated from the rest ; permitted to worship 
the same God as the whites, but not to pray at the same 
altar ; and when life is passed the difference of condition 
prevailing still even over the equality of the grave. 2 

Impressed by the menace from slavery, he further 
pictures the Union succumbing to the States: — 

" I deceive myself, or the Federal Government of the 
United States tends daily to weaken itself. It withdraws 
successively from affairs ; it restricts more and more the 
circle of its action. Naturally feeble, it abandons even the 
appearance of force." 3 

i De la De'mocratie en AmeVique, Tom. II. Chap. X. p. 302 (ed. 1S64). 

2 Ibid., p. 307. 

3 Ibid., Tom. II. Chap. X. p. 397. 



ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, 1835. 163 

Such was the condition when De Tocqueville wrote, 
and so it continued until the Rebellion broke forth and 
the country rose to save the Union. Foreseeing this 
peril, he did not despair of the Republic, which, in his 
judgment, was " the natural state of the Americans," 2 
with roots more profound than the Union. 

In describing the future he becomes a prophet. Ac- 
cepting the conclusion that the number of inhabitants 
doubles in twenty-two years, and not recognizing any 
causes to arrest this progressive movement, he foresees 
the colossal empire : — 

" The Americans of the United States, whatever they do, 
will become one of the greatest people of the earth ; they 
will cover with their offshoots almost an .North America. 
The continent which they inhabit is their domain ; it can- 
not escape them." 2 

Then, declaring that the " English race," not stopping 
within the limits of the Union, will advance much be- 
yond towards the northeast, — that at the northwest 
they will encounter only Russian settlements without 
importance, that at the southwest the vast solitudes 
of Mexican territory will be appropriated, — and dwell- 
ing on the fortunate geographical position of " the Eng- 
lish of America," with their climate, their interior seas, 
their great rivers, and the fertility of their soil, he is 
ready to say : — 

" So in the midst of the uncertainty of the future there 
is at least one event which is certain. At an epoch which 
we can call near, since it concerns the life of a people, 
the Anglo-Americans alone will cover all the immense ter- 
ritory comprised between the polar ice and the tropics ; they 

1 De la Democratic en Amerique, Tom. II. Chap. X. p. 399 (ed. 1864). 

2 Ibid., p. 379. 



164 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

will spread from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean even to 
the coasts of the Southern Sea." * 

Then, declaring that the territory destined to the 
Anglo-American race equals three fourths of Europe, 
that many centuries will pass before the different off- 
shoots of this race will cease to present a common 
physiognomy, that no epoch can be foreseen when in 
the New World there will be any permanent inequal- 
ity of conditions, and that there are processes of 
association and of knowledge by which the people are 
assimilated with each other and with the rest of the 
world, the prophet speaks : — 

" There will then arrive a time when there will be seen 
in North America one hundred and fifty millions of men, 
equal together, who will all belong to the same family, who 
will have the same point of departure, the same civilization, 
the same language, the same religion, the same habits, the 
same manners, and over which thought will circulate in the 
same form and paint itself in the same colors. All else is 
doubtful, but this is certain. Here is a fact entirely new 
in the world, of which imagination can hardly seize the 
extent." 2 

No American can fail to be strengthened in the fu- 
ture of the Republic by the testimony of De Tocqueville. 
Honor and gratitude to bis memory ! 

RICHARD COBDEN, 1849. 

Coming yet nearer to our own day, we meet a famil- 
iar name, now consecrated by death, — Richard Cobden ; 
born 3d June, 1804, and died 2d April, 1865. In 

1 De la De'mocratie en Ame'rique Tom. II. Chap. X. p. 428 (ed. 1864). 

2 Ibid , p. 430. 



RICHARD COBDEN, 1849. 165 

proportion as truth prevails among men, his character 
will shine with increasing glory until he is recognized 
as the first Englishman of his time. Though thor- 
oughly English, he was not insular. He served man- 
kind as well as England. 

His masterly faculties and his real goodness made 
him a prophet always. He saw the future, and strove 
to hasten its promises. The elevation and happiness 
of the human family were his daily thought, He knew 
how to build as well as to destroy. Through him dis- 
abilities upon trade and oppressive taxes were over- 
turned ; also a new treaty was negotiated with France, 
quickening commerce and intercourse. He was never 
so truly eminent as when bringing his practical sense 
and enlarged experience to commend the cause of Per- 
manent Peace in the world by the establishment of a 
refined system of International Justice, and the dis- 
arming of the nations. To this great consummation 
all his later labors tended. I have before me a long 
letter, dated at London, 7th November, 1849, where 
he says much on this absorbing question, from which, 
by an easy transition, lie passes to speak of the pro- 
posed annexation of Canada to the United States. As 
what he says on the latter topic concerns America, and 
is a prophetic voice, I have obtained permission to copy 
it for this collection : — 

" Race, religion, language, traditions, are becoming bonds 
of union, and not the parchment title-deeds of sovereigns. 
These instincts may be thwarted for the day, but they are 
too deeply rooted in nature and in usefulness not to prevail 
in the end. I look with less interest to these struggles of 
races to live apart for what they want to undo, than for 
what they will prevent being done in future. They will 



166 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

warn rulers that henceforth the acquisition of fresh territory, 
by force of arms, will only bring embarrassments and civil ivar, 
instead of that increased strength which, in ancient times, 
when people were passed, like flocks of sheep, from one king 
to another, always accompanied the incorporation of new 
territorial conquests. 

" This is the secret of the admitted doctrine, that we 
shall have no more wars of conquest or ambition. In this 
respect you are differently situated, having vast tracts of 
unpeopled territory to tempt that cupidity which, in respect 
of landed property, always disposes individuals and nations, 
however rich in acres, to desire more. This brings me to 
the subject of Canada, to which you refer in your letters. 

" I agree with you, that nature has decided that Canada 
and the United States must become one, for all purposes of 
free intercommunication. Whether they also shall be united 
in the same federal government must depend upon the two 
parties to the union. I can assure you that there will be 
no repetition of the policy of 1776, on our part, to prevent 
our North American colonies from pursuing their interest 
in their own way. If the people of Canada are tolerably 
unanimous in wishing to sever the very slight thread which 
now binds them to this country, I see no reason why, if 
good faith and ordinary temper be observed, it should not 
be done amicably. I think it would be far more likely to 
be accomplished peaceably if the subject of annexation were 
left as a distinct question. I am quite sure that we should 
be gainers, to the amount of about a million sterling annu- 
ally, if our North American colonists would set up in life 
for themselves and maintain their own establishments, and 
I see no reason to doubt that they might be also gainers by 
being thrown upon their own resources. 

"The less your countrymen mingle in the controversy, 
the better. It will only be an additional obstacle in the 
path of those in this country who see the ultimate necessity 



LUCAS ALAMAN, 1852. 167 

of a separation, but who have still some ignorance and 
prejudice to contend against, which, if used as political 
capital by designing politicians, may complicate seriously 
a very difficult piece of statesmanship. It is for you and 
such as you, who love peace, to guide your countrymen 
aright in this matter. You have made the most noble 
contributions of any modern writer to the cause of peace ; 
and as a public man I hope you will exert all your influence 
to induce Americans to hold a dignified attitude and observe 
a ' masterly inactivity ' in the controversy which is rapidly 
advancing to a solution between the mother country and 
her American colonies." 

A prudent patriotism among us will appreciate the 
wisdom of this counsel, more needed now than when 
written. The controversy which Cobden foresaw "be- 
tween the mother country and her American colonies " 
is yet undetermined. The recent creation of what is 
somewhat grandly called " The Dominion of Canada " 
marks one stage in its progress. 

LUCAS ALAMAN, 1852. 

Fkom Canada I pass to Mexico, and close this list 
with Lucas Alaman, the Mexican statesman and histo- 
rian, who has left on record a most pathetic prophecy 
with regard to his own country, intensely interesting 
to us at this moment. 

Alaman was born in the latter part of the last cen- 
tury, and died June 2, 1853. He was a prominent 
leader of the monarchical party, and Minister of Foreign 
Affairs under Presidents Bustamente and Santa Ana. 
In this capacity he inspired the respect of foreign di- 
plomatists. One of these, who had occasion to know 



1C8 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

him officially, says of him, in answer to my inquiries, 
that he " was the greatest statesman Mexico has pro- 
duced since her independence." 1 He was one of the 
few in any country who have been able to unite liter- 
ature with public life, and obtain honors in each. 

His first work was "Dissertations on the History of 
the Mexican Republic," 2 in three volumes, published 
at Mexico, 1844. In these he considers the original 
conquest by Cortes, its consequences, the conqueror 
and his family, the propagation of the Christian re- 
ligion in New Spain, the formation of the city of Mex- 
ico, the history of Spain and the house of Bourbon. 
All these topics are treated somewhat copiously. Then 
followed the " History of Mexico, from the First Move- 
ments which prepared its Independence in 1808, to the 
present Epoch," 3 in five volumes, published at Mexico, 
the first bearing date 1849, and the fifth 1852. From 
the Preface to the first volume, it appears that the 
author was born in Guanajuato, and witnessed there 
the beginning of the Mexican revolution in 1810, under 
Don Miguel Hidalgo, the curate of Dolores ; that he 
was personally acquainted with the curate and with 
many who had a principal part in the successes of that 
time ; that he was experienced in public affairs, as 
deputy and as member of the cabinet; and that he 
had known directly the persons and things of which 
he wrote. His last volume embraces the government 
of Iturbide as Emperor, and also his unfortunate death, 
ending with the establishment of the Mexican Federal 

1 The excellent Baron von Gerolt, for so long a period at Washington as 
Minister of Prussia and of the German Empire. 

2 Disertaciones sobre la Historia de la Republica Megicana. 

3 Historia de Mejico desde los primeros Movimientos que prepararon a 
mi Independencia en al Afio de 180S hasta la Epoca presente. 



LUCAS ALAMAN, 1852. 169 

Bepublic in 1824. The work is careful and well con- 
sidered. The eminent diplomatist already mentioned, 
who had known the author officially, writes that "no 
one was better acquainted with the history and causes 
of the incessant revolutions in his unfortunate country, 
and that his work on this subject is considered by all 
respectable men in Mexico a chef-cVceuvre for purity of 
sentiments and patriotic convictions." 

It is on account of the valedictory words of this His- 
tory that I introduce the name of Alaman, and nothing 
more striking appears in this gallery. Behold : — 

" Mexico will be, without doubt, a land of prosperity 
from its natural advantages, but it will not be so for the 
races which now inhabit it. As it seemed the destiny of the 
peoples who established themselves therein at different and 
remote epochs to perish from the face of it, leaving hardly 
a memory of their existence ; even as the nation which built 
the edifices of Palenque, and those which we admire in the 
peninsula of Yucatan, was destroyed without its being known 
what it was nor how it disappeared ; even as the Toltecs per- 
ished by the hands of barbarous tribes coming from the North, 
no record of them remaining but the pyramids of Cholnlu 
and Teotihuacan ; and, finally, even as the ancient Mexicans 
fell beneath the power of the Spaniards, the country gaining 
infinitely by this change of dominion, but its ancient masters 
being overthrown ; — ■ so likewise its present inhabitants shall 
be ruined and hardly obtain the compassion they have mer- 
ited, and the Mexican nation of our days shall have applied 
to it what a celebrated Latin poet said of one of the most 
famous personages of Roman history, STAT MAGNI NOMI- 
NIS UMBRA, 1 — nothing more remains than the shadow 
of a name illustrious in another time. 

1 In the original text of Alaman this is printed in large capitals, and 
explained in a note as said by Lucan of Fompey. 
8 



170 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

"May the Almighty, in whose hands is the fate of nations, 
and who by ways hidden from our sight abases or exalts 
them, according to the designs of his providence, be pleased 
to grant unto ours the protection by which he has so often 
deigned to preserve it from the dangers to which it has been 
exposed." 1 

Most affecting words of prophecy ! Considering the 
character of the author as statesman and historian, it 
could have been only with inconceivable anguish that 
he made this terrible record for the land whose child 
and servant he was. Born and reared in Mexico, hon- 
ored by its important trusts, and writing the history 
of its independence, it was his country, having for 
him all that makes country dear ; and yet thus calmly 
he consigns the present people to oblivion, while an- 
other enters into those happy places where nature is 
so bountiful. And so a Mexican leaves the door open 
to the foreigner. 

CONCLUSION. 

Such are prophetic voices, differing in character and 
importance, but all having one augury, and opening one 
vista, illimitable in extent and vastness. Farewell to 
the narrow thought of Montesquieu, that a republic can 
exist only in a small territory. Through representation 
and federation a continent is not too much for practical 
dominion, nor is it beyond expectation. Well did Web- 
ster say, " The prophecies and the poets are with us." 
And then again, " With regard to this country there is 
no poetry like the poetry of events, and all the prophe- 
cies lag behind the fulfilment." 2 But my purpose is not 

i Historia, Tom. V. pp. 954, 955. 

2 Speech at the Festival of the Sons of New Hampshire, 7th November, 
1849: Works, Vol. II. pp. 510, 511. 



CONCLUSION. 171 

with the fulfilment, except as it stands forth visible 
to all. 

Ancient prophecy foretold another world beyond the 
ocean, which in the mind of Christopher Columbus was 
nothing less than the Orient with its inexhaustible 
treasures. The continent was hardly known when the 
prophets began, — poets like Chapman, Drayton, Daniel, 
Herbert, Cowley, — economists like Child and Drayton, 
— New-Englanders like Morrill, Ward, and Sewall, — 
and, mingling with these, that rare genius, Sir Thomas 
Browne, who, in the reign of Charles II., while the 
settlements were in infancy, predicted their growth in 
power and civilization; and then that rarest charac- 
ter, Bishop Berkeley, who, in the reign of George I., 
while the settlements were still feeble and undevel- 
oped, heralded a Western empire as " Time's noblest 
offspring." 

These voices are general. Others more precise fol- 
lowed. Turgot, the philosopher and minister, saw in 
youth, with the vision of genius, that all colonies must 
at their maturity drop from the parent stem, like ripe 
fruit. John Adams, one of the chiefs of our own his- 
tory, in a youth illumined as that of Turgot, saw 
the predominance of the Colonies in population and 
power, followed by the transfer of empire to America ; 
then the glory of Independence and its joyous celebra- 
tion by grateful generations ; then the triumph of our 
language ; and, finally, the establishment of our repub- 
lican institutions over all North America. Then came 
the Abbe Galiani, the Neapolitan Frenchman, who, 
writing from Naples while our struggle was still un- 
decided, gayly predicts the total downfall of Europe, 
the transmigration to America, and the consummation 



172 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

of the greatest revolution of the globe by establishing 
the reign of America over Europe. There is also Adam 
Smith, the illustrious philosopher, who quietly carries 
the seat of government across the Atlantic. Meanwhile 
Pownall, once a colonial governor and then a member of 
Parliament, in successive works of great detail, fore- 
shadows independence, naval supremacy, commercial 
prosperity, immigration from the Old World, and a new 
national life, destined to supersede the systems of 
Europe and arouse the " curses " of royal ministers. 
Hartley, also a member of Parliament, and the British 
negotiator who signed the definitive treaty of Indepen- 
dence, bravely announces in Parliament that the New 
World is before the Colonists, and that liberty is theirs ; 
and afterwards, as diplomatist, instructs his government 
that, through the attraction of our public lands, immi- 
gration will be quickened beyond precedent, and the 
national debt cease to be a burden. Aranda, the 
Spanish statesman and diplomatist, predicts to his king 
that the United States, though born a " pygmy," will 
soon be a " colossus," under whose influence Spain will 
lose all her American possessions except only Cuba and 
Porto Pico. Paley, the philosopher, hails our success- 
ful revolution as destined to accelerate the fall of slav- 
ery, which he denounces as an abominable tyranny. 
Burns, the truthful poet, who loved mankind, looks for- 
ward a hundred years, and beholds our people rejoicing 
in the centenary of their independence. Sheridan pic- 
tures our increasing prosperity, and the national dignity 
winning the respect, confidence, and affection of the 
world. Fox, the liberal statesman, foresees the increas- 
ing might and various relations of the United States, 
so that a blow aimed at them must have a rebound as 



CONCLUSION. 173 

destructive as itself. The Abbe Gregoire, devoted to 
the slave, whose freedom he predicts, describes the 
power and glory of the American Republic, resting on 
the two great oceans, and swaying the world. Tardily, 
Jefferson appears with anxiety for the National Union, 
and yet announcing our government as the familiar 
and precious model to change the condition of man- 
kind. Canning, the brilliant orator, in a much-admired 
flight of eloquence, discerns the New World, with its 
republics just called into being, redressing the balance 
of the Old. De Tocqueville, while clearly foreseeing 
the peril from slavery, proclaims the future grandeur of 
the Republic, covering " almost all North America," 
and making the continent its domain, with a popu- 
lation, equal in rights, counted by the hundred mil- 
lion. Cobden, whose fame will be second only to that 
of Adam Smith among all in this catalogue, calmly pre- 
dicts the separation of Canada from the mother country 
by peaceable means. Alaman, the Mexican statesman 
and historian, announces that Mexico, which has already 
known so many successive races, will hereafter be ruled 
by yet another people, taking the place of the present 
possessors ; and with these prophetic words, the patriot 
draws a pall over his country. 

All these various voices, of different times and lands, 
mingle and intertwine in representing the great fu- 
ture of our Republic, which from small beginnings has 
already become great. It was at first only a grain 
of mustard-seed, " which is, indeed, the least of all 
seeds ; but when it is grown, it is the greatest among 
herbs, and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air 
come and lodge in the branches thereof." Better still, 
it was only a little leaven, but it is fast leavening the 



174 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

whole continent. Nearly all who have prophesied 
speak of " America " or " North America," and not of 
any limited circle, colony, or state. It was so, at the 
beginning, with Sir Thomas Browne, and especially with 
Berkeley. During our Eevolution the Colonies, strug- 
gling for independence, were always described by this 
continental designation. They were already " America," 
or " North America," (and such was the language of 
Washington,) thus incidentally foreshadoM'ing that com- 
ing time when the whole continent, with all its vari- 
ous states, shall be a Plural Unit, with one Consti- 
tution, one Liberty, and one Destiny. The theme was 
also taken up by the poet, and popularized in the often- 
quoted lines : — 

" No pent-up Utica contracts your powers, 
But the whole boundless continent is yours. " 1 

Such grandeur may justly excite anxiety rather than 
pride, for duties are in corresponding proportion. There 
is occasion for humility also, as the individual consid- 
ers his own insignificance in the transcendent mass. 
The tiny polyp, in unconscious life, builds the ever- 
lasting coral ; each citizen is little more than the in- 
dustrious insect. The result is reached by the con- 
tinuity of combined exertion. Millions of citizens, 
working in obedience to nature, can accomplish any- 
thing. 

Of course, war is an instrumentality which true civ- 
ilization disowns. Here some of our prophets have 
erred. Sir Thomas Browne was so much overshadowed 
by his own age, that his vision was darkened by " great 
armies," and even " hostile and piratical attacks " on 

1 By Jonathan M. Sewall, in an epilogue to Addison's Tragedy of " Cato," 
written in 1778 for the Bow Street Theatre, Portsmouth, N. H. 



CONCLUSION. 175 

Europe. It was natural that Aranda, schooled in worldly 
life, should imagine the new-born power ready to seize 
the Spanish possessions. Among our own countrymen, 
Jefferson looked to war for the extension of dominion. 
The Floridas, he says on one occasion, " are ours on the 
first moment of war, and until a war they are of no 
particular necessity to us." 1 Happily they were ac- 
quired in another way. Then again, while declaring 
that no constitution was ever before so calculated as 
ours for extensive empire and self-government, and in- 
sisting upon Canada as a component part, he calmly 
says that "this would be, of course, in the first war." 2 
Afterwards, while confessing a longing for Cuba, "as 
the most interesting addition that could ever be made 
to our system of States," he says that " he is sensible 
this can never be obtained, even with her own con- 
sent, without war." 3 Thus at each stage is the bap- 
tism of blood. In much better mood the poet Bishop 
recognized empire as moving gently in the pathway 
of light. All this is much clearer now than when he 
prophesied. 

It is easy to see that empire obtained by force is un- 
republican, and offensive to the first principle of our 
Union, according to which all just government stands 
only on the consent of the governed. Our country 
needs no such ally as war. Its destiny is mightier than 
war. Through peace it will have everything. This is 
our talisman. Give us peace, and population will in- 
crease beyond all experience ; resources of all kinds 
will multiply infinitely ; arts will embellish the land 

1 Complete Works, Vol. V. p. 444. 

2 Ibid. 

3 Ibid., Vol. VII. p. 316. See also pp. 288, 299. 



176 PROPHETIC VOICES CONCERNING AMERICA. 

with immortal beauty; the name of Republic will be 
exalted, until every neighbor, yielding to irresistible 
attraction, seeks new life in becoming part of the 
great whole ; and the national example will be more 
puissant than army or navy for the conquest of the 
world. 



THE END. 



Cambridge : Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co. 



" Not ordinary addresses, — they remind us rather of the Orations of De- 
mosthenes, — of times when men of note, endowed with the highest under- 
standing, gave full vent to the feelings that possessed them, and stirred their 
country with a fervid eloquence which was all the more impressive because it 
related to the political circumstances in which their country was placed." — 
Edinburgh Journal. 



THE COMPLETE WORKS 



CHAELES SUMNER, 

In Twelve elegant Crown 8vo Volumes, with Portrait, 
Notes, and Index. 



Price per volume, Fine English Cloth $3.00 

" " " Half Calf, Gilt Extra, Library Edition 5.00 

PUBLISHED BY 

LEE A.NTD 8HEPAED, 

Nos. 41 - 45 Franklin Street, Boston. 



ANNOUNCEMENT. 

Messrs. LEE & SHEPARD respectfully an- 
nounce the continuation and early completion of 

THE WORKS OF CHARLES SUMNER. 

The original prospectus was issued when the dis- 
tinguished orator and statesman was in the midst of 
his honorable career, and had apparently before 
him all the evening of his life, for the revision of 
his Orations, Speeches, and Addresses. Not- 
withstanding 'his impaired health, he had labored 
with assiduity to arrange and perfect them ; and 
before his death Nine Volumes had been published, 
and the tenth was given to the printers. Materials 
for two or more volumes, carefully prepared by him- 
self, are now in the hands of friends who are fully 
acquainted with his opinions, and familiar with his 
intellectual methods. 

From the time of his election, in 1851, to the U. S. 
Senate, Charles Sumner was constantly before the 
public as the leader and representative of the party 
of freedom ; and the volumes of his speeches form 
of themselves a history of the United States for 
over twenty years. It is seldom that the lifetime 
of one man, still less the period of his public ser- 
vices, includes the beginning and end of a contro- 
versy, so momentous in character, so far-reaching in 
effect, as that which has lately resulted in establishing 
the doctrine that "Freedom" is National." 



The founders of the republic are deservedly hon- 
ored ; but the great leaders in the party of equal 
rights, whose labors have given us a country worth 
living for, and worth dying to defend, must claim 
equal honor and gratitude from the present genera- 
tion and from posterity. 

The value of Mr. Sumner's works to students of 
political history, to scholars, and all lovers of litera- 
ture, cannot well be over-estimated. They will be 
welcomed as a fitting memorial of the long and bril- 
liant services of the man whose name and fame are a 
part of the renown of his country. 

This edition, of which nine volumes are now 
ready for delivery to subscribers, will be elegantly 
printed on tinted and plated paper, from new type, 
will contain an accurate portrait of Mr. Sumner, and 
will be furnished with a complete analytical and 
topical index. 



SOLD ONLY BY SUBSCRIPTION. 

LEE AND SHEPARD, Publishers, 

Nos. 41-45 Franklin Street. 

BUTLER AND FLEETWOOD, General Agents, 

No. 47 Franklin Street, Boston. 

^W° Agents of experience and capacity ivanted throughout the 
United States. 



IN PREPARATION. 
THE ONLY AUTHORIZED 

LIFE OF CHARLES SUMNER, 

From materials left in the hands of his literal executors 
by the distinguished Senator. It will be issued at an early 
day, and will be uniform with the Complete Works now in 
course of preparation. 



The Publishers invite attention to the following ex- 
tracts taken from the mass of communications and tes- 
timonials received from prominent and leading men on 
both sides of the Atlantic : — 

From Francis Lieber. 
The complete works of Senator Sumner will have a high value 
for the earnest student who desires to trace the causes of some 
of the greatest movements in our times, — the times of political 
Reformation. They will have a great value in point of Political 
Ethics, of Statesmanship (or what the ancients called Politics), 
and in point of the Psychology of our own nation, in point of 
the Law of Nations and for every English scholar and admirer of 
eloquence. Not only will the works of Senator Sumner, after 
whose title, in Rome, the words " Four Times in Succession " 
would have been put, be gladly received by every reflecting pub- 
lic man in America, but also by every high-minded Nationalist 
and lover of freedom in Europe. 



From William Cullen Bryant. 
I am glad to learn that Mr. Sumner's works are to be collected 
and published under his own superintendence and revision. He 
ranks among our most eminent public men, and never treats of 
any subject without shedding new light upon it, and giving us 
reason to admire both his ability and the extent and accuracy of 
his information. 



From Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
I learn with interest that you are preparing to publish a com- 
plete collection of Mr. Sumner's writings and speeches. They 
will be the history of the Republic in the last twenty-five years, 
as told by a brave, perfectly honest, and well-instructed man, with 
large social culture, and relations to all eminent persons. Few 
public men have left records more important, — none more blame- 
less. Mr. Sumner's large ability, his careful education, his indus- 
try, his early dedication to public affairs, his power of exhaustive 



statement, and his pure character, — qualities rarely combined in 
one man, — have been the strength and pride of the Republic. 
In Massachusetts, the patriotism of his constituents has treated 
him with exceptional regard. The ordinary complaisances ex- 
pected of a candidate have not been required of him, it being 
known that his service was one of incessant labor, and that he had 
small leisure to plead his own cause, and less to nurse his private 
interests. There will be the more need of the careful publication in 
a permanent form of these vindications of political liberty and 
morality. 

I hope that Mr. Sumner's contributions to some literary journals 
will not be omitted in your collection. 



From John G. Whittier. 
It gives me much satisfaction to learn that the entire speeches 
of Mr. Sumner are about to be published. Apart from their great 
merit in a literary and scholastic point of view, and as exhaustive 
arguments upon questions of the highest import, they have a cer- 
tain historic value which will increase with the lapse of time. 
Whoever wishes to understand the legislation and political and 
moral progress of the country for the last quarter of a century, 
must study these remarkable speeches. I am heartily glad the 
publication has been determined upon, and wish it the success it 
deserves. 



From Horace Greeley. 
I hail it as a cheering sign of the times that the speeches and 
writings of Charles Sumner are to be published complete. We live 
in an age of inconsiderate gabble, when too many make speeches 
" on the spur of the moment," and " now that I am up," say 
whatever may chance to come into their heads. Mr. Sumner suf- 
ficiently respects his associates and his countrymen to speak with 
due preparation, and only when he feels that silence would be 
dereliction. " Not to stir without great arguments " is his 'rule : 
hence his speeches are not only a part of his country's history, but 
a very creditable and instructive part of it. In an age of venality 
and of reckless calumny, no man has ever doubted the purity of 
his motives, the singleness of his aims ; and if the august title of 



6 

statesman has been deserved by any American of his age, he is 
that American. I trust his collected writings will receive wide 
currency, as I am sure they will command universal consideration. 



From Samuel G. Howe. 
I think that your proposed edition of Mr. Sumner's Speeches 
will do much good. His public career teaches a lesson which 
should be learned by all who aspire to usefulness and true great- 
ness. The source of his popularity and influence, creditable alike 
to him and to the people, is an intuitive perception of the right 
and firm faith in its prevalence. To him, whatever is right is ever 
expedient. Be the political horizon ever so dark, he knows the 
direction of the pole-star, and steers boldly towards it. In oppos- 
ing storms, while ordinary politicians, like sailing ships, tack and 
keep as near the wind as seems safe, he, like the steamer, steers 
straight in the wind's eye ; and though he may, for the moment, 
make no headway, he swerves not, larboard nor starboard. Most 
statesmen and politicians represent certain doctrines or party in- 
terests; while he represents the moral sense of the people. Where 
that sense is most developed, there he is best understood and most 
esteemed. A new edition of his Speeches will help to develop it 
still more; and it is fur that end, rather than building a mon- 
ument to him, that his friends ought to co-operate for your suc- 
cess. 



From. Caleb Cusldng. 
I think the speeches, discourses, and miscellaneous papers of 
Mr. Sumner eminently deserve to be collected and published in 
a complete form. Whatever difference of opinion there may be 
in the country concerning the various political doctrines which 
in his long Senatorial career ho has so earnestly and so steadily 
maintained, certain it is that his productions constitute an essen- 
tial part of our public history as well in foreign as in domestic 
relations ; and they are characterized by such qualities of supe- 
rior intellectual power, cultivated eloquence, and great and general 
accomplishment and statesmanship, as entitle them to a high 
and permanent place in the political literature of the United 
States. 



From James Russell Lowell. 

I am glad to hear that you have undertaken an edition of Mr. 
Sumner's collected works. There is a manifest propriety in this, 
for not only has he made many contributions to literature proper, 
but his speeches have been elaborated with so much care, and 
illustrated from so wide a field of reading, that letters claim in 
them an equal share with politics. Whatever view may be taken 
of them, they form an essential part of our history for the last 
twenty years. 

Though I have sometimes been unable to go along with Mr. 
Sumner in his application of opinions, with which I mainly agreed, 
to questions of immediate policy, I have always duly honored the 
sincerity of his convictions, and his courage in maintaining them. 
A life of high aims, public purposes, and sustained integrity, has 
been fully rewarded by a constituency of which that which he 
represents in the Senate forms but a small portion, and I cannot 
doubt that your enterprise will be welcomed as it deserves by all 
who know how to appreciate an eloquence which has so largely 
confined itself to the discussion of principles, and a culture which 
is an ornament to the Senate. 



From George William Curtis. 

I am very glad to learn that the complete works of Charles 
Sumner will soon be published. 

Mr. Sumner's public life has been illustrious for his unswerving 
devotion to human liberty, and his service in the great struggle 
of the last twenty years will be always gratefully remembered. 
Even the qualities that now alienate a certain sympathy will then 
be seen to have been necessary to his work. 

His speeches are an essential part of the history of those times, 
and are distinguished by their ample knowledge and their lofty 
tone. There is no American citizen who may not study his works 
with instruction, no American statesman who may not contem- 
plate his career with advantage. 



8 

From Benjamin F. Butler. 

I am much pleased to learn that a complete compilation of Mr. 
Sumner's speeches and letters is to be published. 

They are a desideratum for the times. The history of the anti- 
slavery contest in Congress is therein written in living language, 
because each speech made of itself an epoch in the struggle. The 
almost providential accident of one vote gave to Mr. Sumner the 
position ot leader in the great work which has purged the institu- 
tions, the very constitution of the country, from the sin and wrong 
of slavery ; and nobly has he filled it; better, indeed, than could 
have been done by any other man in the nation. The virulent op- 
position which he met in the great task which he undertook re- 
quired his varied accomplishments and learning, his untiring 
industry, and unswerving devotion to principle, —qualities sel- 
dom united in one. The history of the regeneration of Republican 
Democracy in the western world would not be complete without 
the volumes you are about to publish. 



From Henry Wilson. 
I am really gratified to learn that you are to publish the com- 
plete works of Mr. Sumner, under his own supervision. During 
the past twenty-five years I have known him, watched his course 
as a public man, heard and read his speeches, and know how he 
has consecrated talents and learning to the rights of man and the 
enduring interests of his country. His speeches have largely con- 
tributed to produce the grand results that cheer and bless us, and 
I am sure they will be read with increasing interest, not only for 
the topics discussed, but for their learning and eloquence. 



From Wendell Phillips. 
I am glad you are to give us a complete collection of Mr. Sum- 
ner's Speeches. His part and place have been such in the last 
twenty years, that his career is largely the history of the Nation. 
His speeches cover the most important and interesting questions 
we have been called to meet. Years ago the easy sneer was that 
he Avas a man of " one idea," — dealt only with one question, or 
one class of questions. 



But Mr. Sumner has been one of the most industrious, perhaps 
the most industrious, Senator that Massachusetts has ever given 
to the national councils. His mind has been more comprehensive 
than that of any of his predecessors. He has grappled with all 
the great problems of the day ; and so thoroughly, so exhaustively, 
as to leave nothing to desire. 

Accurate, profoundly learned, always in the van, fearless, wield- 
ing a most commanding influence, his speeches will be the most 
valuable contribution possible to the literature of politics and re- 
form. They have " made history," and will naturally be the best 
reliance of those who shall study our times, as his career will be, 
both for students and statesmen, one of the noblest examples. 



By Hon. John P. Hale, in the United States Senate, August 27, 
1851, in the debate after Mr. Sumner's Speech entitled " Freedom Na- 
tional, Slavery Sectional." 

I feel bound to say that the Honorable Senator from Massachu- 
setts has, so far as his own ^personal fame and reputation are con- 
cerned, done enough, by the effort he has made here to-day to 
place himself side by side with the first orators of antiquity, and 
as far ahead of any living American orator as freedom is ahead of 
slavery. I believe he has founded a new era to-day in the history 
of the politics and of the eloquence of the country ; and that, in 
future generations, the young men of this nation will be stim- 
ulated to effort by the record of what an American Senator has 
this day done, to which all the appeals drawn from ancient history 
would be entirely inadequate. Yes, sir, he has to-day made a 
draft upon the gratitude of the friends of humanity and of liberty 
that will not be paid through many generations, and the memory 
of which shall endure as long as the English language is spoken, 
or the history of this Republic forms part of the annals of the 
world. That, sir, is what I feel, and if I had one other feeling, 
or could indulge in it in reference to that effort, it would be a 
feeling alway, that it was not in me to tread, even at a humble 
distance, in the path he has so nobly and eloquently illustrated. 



10 

From Hannibal Hamlin. 

I learn with great pleasure that the complete works of Hon. 
Charles Sumner are being now prepared, and will soon be pub- 
lished. 

The high position which Mr. Sumner has so long and so honor- 
ably maintained as one of the leading minds of the nation, his in- 
timate connection with and lead in the great measure of the 
abolition of slavery, and all the great questions of the late war, 
and those involved in a just settlement of the same, render it a 
desideratum that his works should be published. 



From S. Austin Allibone. 

I have been in the habit for some years past, from time to time, 
of urging my valued friend, Mr. Sumner, to publish a collective 
edition of his speeches. You may therefore imagine the pleasure 
with which I have received the announcement that you are now 
engaged in the publication of a uniform edition of his complete 
works. 

One of the favorite pupils of Judge Story, who considered him 
rather as a son than as his pupil (see Story's Life and Letters, Yol. II. 
p. 39), the endeared friend of Prescott, Wheaton, the Earl of Car- 
lisle, and many of the most distinguished scholars on both sides of 
the Atlantic, Mr. Sumner's opportunities of instruction by con- 
tact with great minds have matured the scholarship of which the 
broad and deep foundations were laid in the laborious days and 
nights of collegiate and private application. 

The " fulness " of his mind and the ease with which he draws from 
the vast stores of memory " things new and old " to illustrate the 
truths which he enforces, the errors he exposes, or the themes he 
propounds, are indeed marvellous ! See for instance, his oration, 
entitled, " The Scholar, the Jurist, the Artist, the Philanthropist," 
(1846), of which Prescott wrote : " I have read or rather listened to 
it, notes and all, with the greatest interest ; and when I say that 
my expectations have not been disappointed after having heard it 
cracked up so, I think you will think it praise enough. The 
most happy conception has been carried out admirably, as if it 
were the most natural order of things, without the least constraint 
or violence." (Ticknor's Life of Prescott, p. 37S.) Among his late 



11 

speeches, take his graphic and glowing portraiture of Alaska, over 
the sterile soil of which the light of his genius has cast a glow of 
bloom and beauty; which as a geographical and topographical 
monograph might have excited the envy of D'Anville or Hum- 
boldt. A complete collection of his works, fully rounded by a 
copious analytical index of subjects discussed, topics referred to, 
and facts adduced, would be an invaluable treasury to the scholar, 
the historian, and the general reader. 



From Edwin P. Whipple. 

I am glad to hear that a complete edition of Senator Sumner's 
works is to be published. 

Not to speak of the eminent literary merit of his speeches and 
addresses, they are specially valuable as having contributed in an im- 
portant degree to " make history " during the past twenty-five 
years. Many of his senatorial efforts are not so much speeches as 
events. They have palpably advanced the cause of honesty, jus- 
tice, freedom, and humanity. It is to the immense honor of Mas- 
sachusetts that she has had for so long a time so noble a representa- 
tive in Washington of her sentiments and ideas, ■ — ■ one whose 
abundant learning, richness and reach of thought, and statesman- 
like forethought are combined with a philanthropy so frank and 
a spirit so intrepid. 

A complete edition of the works of a statesman so variously 
endowed, and who has treated so many subjects with such a mas- 
terly command of knowledge, reasoning, and eloquence, cannot 
fail to be widely circulated. 



From Hunt's Merchants' Magazine. 
The Orations of Mr. Sumner belong to the literature of Amer- 
ica. They are as far superior to the endless number of orations 
and speeches which are delivered throughout the country as the 
works of a polished, talented, and accomplished author surpass 
the ephemeral productions of a day. Pure and highly classical 
in style, strong in argument, and rich and glowing in imagery, 
and in some parts almost reaching the poetic, they come to the 
reader always fresh, always interesting and attractive. In one 
respect these orations surpass almost all others. It is in the ele- 
vation of sentiment, the high and lofty moral tone and grandeur 



12 

of thought which they possess. In this particular, united with 
their literary merit, these productions have no equal among us. 
The one on the " True - Grandeur of Nations " stands forth by 
itself, like a serene and majestic image, cut from the purest Parian 
marble. Those on " Peace and War," and two or three others, 
possess equal merit, equal beauty, and equal purity and dignity 
of thought. In our view, these orations approach nearer the 
models of antiquity than those of any other writer amongst us, 
unless it be Webster, whom Sumner greatly surpasses in moral 
tone and dignity of thought. 



Many of the distinguished statesmen and scholars of our country, 
nou. deceased, left on record their opinion of the character and value 
of Air. Sumner's public services. From among these a few are 
selected. 

From John Quincy Adams. 

In a letter addressed to Mr. Sumner immediately after the de- 
livery of the celebrated oration, " The Scholar, the Artist, the 
Jurist, the Philanthropist," Mr. Adams remarks : — 

" It is a gratification to me to have the opportunity to repeat 
the thanks which I so cordially gave you at the close of your ora- 
tion last Thursday, and of which the sentiment offered by me at 
the dinner-table,* was but an additional pulsation from the same 
head. I trust I may now congratulate you on the felicity, first of 
your selection of your subject, and secondly, by its consummation 
in the delivery. But you will indulge me in the frankness and 
candor, which if they had not been the laws of a long life, would 
yet be imperative duties on its last stage, in the remark that the 
pleasure with which I listened to your discourse was inspired far 
less by the success, and all but universal acceptance and applause 
of the present moment, than by the vista of the future which it 
opened to my view. Casting my eyes back no further than the 
Fourth of July of the last year, when you set all the vipers of 
Alecto hissing, by proclaiming the Christian law of Universal 
Peace and Love, and then casting them forward perhaps, not much 

* The sentiment was, — " The memory of the Scholar, the Jurist, the 
Artist, and the Philanthropist, and — not the memory, hut the long life of 
the kindred spirit who has this day embalmed them all." 



13 

further, but beyond my own allotted time, I see you have a mission 
to perform. I look from Pisga'h to the Promised Land, — you 
must enter upon it." , 



From Edward Everett. 

The late Hon. Edward Everett, in acknowledging the receipt 
of the two-volume edition of Mr. Sumner's speeches, published 
several years ago, said : — 

" Their contents, most of which were well known to me already, 
are among the most finished productions of their class in our lan- 
guage, — in any language. I am sure they will be read and ad- 
mired, as long as anything English or American is remembered." 



From Chancellor Kent, of Neio York. 

Of Mr. Sumner's speech on " The Right of Search on the Coast 
of Africa," Chancellor Kent remarked in a private letter : — 

" I have no hesitation in subscribing to it as entirely sound, 
logical, and conclusive. There is no doubt of it, and the neatness 
and elegance with which it is written are delightful." 

The same eminent authority remarks of Mr. Sumner's Oration 
on "The True Grandeur of Nations," — 

" I think the doctrine is well sustained by principle, and the 
precepts of the Gospel. The historical and classical illustrations 
are beautiful and apposite, and I cannot but think that such 
cogent and eloquent appeals to the heads and consciences of our 
people, must have effect." 

Of Mr. Sumner's sketch of Hon. John Pickering, Chancellor 
Kent wrote : — 

" The biographical sketch of that extraordinary scholar and man, 
John Pickering, is admirable, and most beautifully and eloquently 
drawn." 

Of Mr. Sumner's celebrated " Phi Beta Kappa Address," he re- 
marks : " I think it to be one of the most splendid productions, in 
point of diction and eloquence, that I have ever read." 



14 

From Martin Van Buren. 

President Van Buren said of the oration on the " Law of Hu- 
man Progress " : — 49 

" It has, be assured, afforded me the highest satisfaction to find 
a production affording such incontestable proof of the learning and 
great intellect of its author, — proceeding from a gentleman who 
has established the strongest claims to my admiration and respect." 



From Judge Story. 

Of Mr. Sumner's oration on " The True Grandeur of Nations," 
Judge Story remarked in a private letter : — 

" It is certainly a very striking production, and will fully sustain 
Mr. Sumner's reputation for high talent, various reading, and exact 
scholarship. There are a great many passages in it which are 
wrought out with an exquisite finish, and elegance of diction, and 

classical style In many parts of the discourse I have been 

struck with the strong resemblance which it bears to the manly, 
moral enthusiasm of Sir James Mackintosh." 



From William Jay. 
I have just received your very acceptable present, ■ — acceptable 
from my esteem for the writer and for the great truths contained 
in the volumes, expressed with the elegance of the scholar and 
the fearless integrity of the Christian. When called to account 
for the use you have made of the talents intrusted to you, these 
volumes will testify that you have labored to do good in your day 
and generation. 



In this connection the estimate entertained of Mr. Sumner by lead- 
ing men in England, will be of interest'. From the great multitude 
of similar opinions, the following are selected : — 

From the Edinburgh Journal. 
Mr. Sumner's lectures are not ordinary addresses, — they remind 
us rather of the orations of Demosthenes, of times when men of 
note, endowed with the highest understanding, gave full vent to 
the feelings that possessed them, and stirred their country with a 
fervid eloquence which was all the more impressive because it 



15 

related to the pr litical circumstances in which their country was 

placed. ( 

We have in our possession many of Mr^umner's speeches, and 
we confess that, for depth and accuracy oPthought, for fulness of 
historical information, and for a species of gigantic morality which 
treads all sophistry under foot, and rushes at once to the right con- 
clusion, we know not a single orator, speaking the English tongue, 
who ranks as his superior. He combines, to a remarkable extent, 
the peculiar features of our British Emancipationists, the persever- 
ance of Granville Sharpe, the knowledge of Brougham, the enthu- 
siasm of Wilberforce, and a courage, which, as he is still a young 
man, may be expected to tell powerfully on the destinies of the 
Republic. 

From Richard Cobden. 
You have made the most noble contribution of any modern 
writer, to the cause of Peace. 



From the London Examiner. 
We would recommend a close and earnest study of the speech 
on the Fugitive Slave Act, made by Mr. Charles Sumner in the 
Senate of the United States on the 26th of last August (1852). 
That speech will reward perusal. Apart from its noble and 
effective eloquence, it is one of the closest and most convincing 
arguments we have ever read on the policy of the earlier and 
greater, as contrasted with that of the later and meaner, statesmen 
of America. 

From a Letter of Lord Shaftesbury to the London Times. 
Let us take a few lines descriptive of the terrible enactment 
from the speech of the Hon. Charles Sumner, one of those pow- 
erful intellects and noble hearts that have shone so brightly in our 

sister country, in the Senate of the United States What 

noble eloquence ! Carry these words, sir, by the vehicle of your 
almost universal paper to the press of every country, and to the 
heart of every human being — man, woman, or child — Avho has 
ever heard the divine rule, " Whatsoever ye would that men 
should do unto you, do ye even so to them." 



16 

From the Poet, Samuel Rogers. 

In a letter to the author, the poet, Samuel Rogers, wrote: 

" What can I say to^^i in return for your admirable oration ? 

(' The True GrandeirrWi Nations.') I can only say with what 

pleasure I have read it, and how truly every pulse of my heart 

beats in accordance with yours on the subject Again and 

again must I thank you." 

From Lord Carlisle. 

Lord Carlisle in his preface to an English edition of " Uncle 
Tom's Cabin," in some pleasant reminiscences of interviews with 
" my own most valued friend, Mr. Charles Sumner," remarks : — 

" And now while I have been writing these lines, I have re- 
ceived the speech he has lately delivered in Congress on the bear- 
ings of the Fugitive Slave Law, which by the closeness of its 
logic, and the masculine vigor of its eloquence, proves to me how 
all the perfections of his mind have grown up to, and been dilated 
with the inspiration of the cause which he has now made his own. 



From Cha?nbers , s Edinburgh Journal. 
The oration (" The True Grandeur of Nations ") of Mr. Sumner, 
for taste, eloquence, and scholarship, as well as for fearless intre- 
pidity, has been rarely equalled in modern harangues. 



From the London Quarterly Review. 
He presents in his own person a decisive proof that an Ameri- 
can gentleman, without official rank or wide-spread reputation, by 
dint of courtesy, candor, an entire absence of pretension, an ap- 
preciative spirit, and a cultivated mind, may be received on a per- 
fect footing of equality in the best circles, social, political, and 
intellectual, which, be it observed, are hopelessly inaccessible to 
the itinerant note-taker who never gets beyond the outskirts of 
the show-houses. 



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